


I'll Save Everyone Myself- Part 1

by theinfiknight477



Series: I'll Save Everyone Myself [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, But it hasn't actually started the time travel bit yet, Gen, My First Fanfic, Prologue, Right so this is meant to be Time travel, So I've removed the time travel tag, but make no mistake this is going to end with time travel, considering this is meant to be a prologue to an actual time travel story, naruto has common sense but just barely
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:34:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 99,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25313896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theinfiknight477/pseuds/theinfiknight477
Summary: Naruto Uzumaki, while on a mission, inadvertently stumbles across a theory that could allow a shinobi to travel back in time. This is the story of that mission, because we still haven't gotten to the actual time travel yet. It takes place in the years succeeding the Fourth Great Ninja War, after the ninja we know and love grew from hotheaded kids into earthshaking titans. Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura discover the secret of time travel by facing the consequences of the war they fought and the new world they created from the rubble of the old one. This is the story of people who refuse to move on and a past that isn't willing to be let go of, just because one decides to let go of it. The cycle of hatred is called a cycle for a reason, and one war doesn't quite erase the other three. And, it will ultimately be a story about time travel where Naruto will make use of said theory to try and save everyone, though maybe that'll be its own story, but this is essentially meant to be a prologue to that. Also there's a lot of messing around on Naruto's part. That's it, and enjoy, if you decide to read it!
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto, Kyuubi | Nine-tails | Kurama & Uzumaki Naruto
Series: I'll Save Everyone Myself [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1984774
Comments: 35
Kudos: 48





	1. If you could change the past, would you? A new mission

**Author's Note:**

> I've never attempted writing anything on this scale before, or any sort of writing project or ever used ao3 at all, and it's honestly terrifying. Additionally I know this is probably a concept that has been explored more thoroughly than Kakashi would explore an icha icha novel, and though I'm certain a bajillion fics like this exist I've never read any fanfic in my entire life except this one undertale one long ago, so hopefully there won't be much crossover and I apologise if there is. I've always just really wanted to give everyone in Naruto the endings they deserved, and who better to do that than Naruto himself. I don't know how many people will actually find/read this(I have no idea how ao3 works), and I also don't yet know how it's going to end, so let's find out together.

“If you could change the past, wouldn’t you?”. It was a silly question. Naruto was not a very instrospective sort of person. He did not often ponder deep questions or dwell excessively on events past. He preferred to live in the moment, and look toward the bright light of a hopeful future. He knew that what was done, was done, and it was the hard lessons and sacrifices of the past that had resulted in the bright future the world shared today. The entire shinobi world had shouldered each other’s pain and had worked together to end the fourth great ninja war. The peace that had been achieved through their sacrifices did not deserve to be disgraced by wishing for a different turn of events. 

“If you could go back, if you knew then what you know now.. If you could save the person closest to you… Wouldn’t you do anything to go back?”. The dying shinobi’s cracked voice haunted him still, ever since his last botched mission. It had all started with Kakashi’s summons to his office few days ago. Naruto felt his memory drifting back to that day. 

Starting that morning like any other, walking through the soothing chaos of the hidden leaf village, past children running around playing ninja, weaving between shinobi bustling around with just as much urgency, running errands and getting to their posts, he passed a familiar bridge overlooking a small stream that flowed into the distance. It seemed like only yesterday that Sasuke, Sakura and himself, young, excitable genin, would wait on that very bridge for their perpetually late sensei to show up. How much things had changed. 

Sasuke was off roaming the world on a journey of ~~self discovery~~ atonement, Sakura was the Hidden Leaf’s most skilled medical shinobi, second in that field (debateably) only to the fifth hokage, and Naruto himself had just finished another A rank mission the other day. Shikamaru was adamant about the fact, and he was right, that Naruto complete as many missions as possible to reinforce his reputation as a capable shinobi worthy of being considered for the position of Hokage someday.

Of late he had been completing missions so rapidly and continuously that he had barely even had time to sleep. Naruto idly wondered if being hokage would be this intense, and dismissed the thought with a laugh. Surely a desk job like that would be way less tiring, leaving him plenty of time to spend with his ~~hypothetical~~ future family. Passing by two chunin running past him, arms full of stacks of paper, he climbed up the stairs of the Hokage’s building.

Hearing whispering behind him, he realised that the chunin had stopped running and seemed to be furtively glancing at him. He hid a sigh of resignation at the fact that everyone in the village still seemed to treat him with a degree of reverence, years after the war, and continued at a brisk pace, entering Kakashi’s office just as Kiba and Akamaru exited his door at the same time.

“Naruto? Is that you?”. Kiba stared at him like there was something wrong with his face.

“What? Is there something wrong with my face?”, Naruto asked.

Kiba let out a guffaw and clapped him on the shoulder as Akamaru barked excitedly. “Nah man, between missions it’s just been forever since I last saw ya, and you look like you haven’t had a good nap in years. Workin’ hard is all well and good but don’t forget to catch a break every once in while. You ain’t gonna be any use as a Hokage if you’re gonna doze off on the job. I'll be the one to become hokage by the time you wake up”.

“Ha.. you wish. But yeah, I know”, said Naruto with a sheepish grin, trying to will the dark circles under his eyes out of existence. He had been off on missions pretty much constantly of late. 

“I hate to interrupt your reunion Naruto, but if you’re quite done..”. The soft, easy voice that sounded from within the office was easily recognisable as Kakashi’s. 

“I’m off then. Come on Akamaru!”. With another loud bark the dog and his partner were gone. Naruto walked into the office, bracing for another high level mission and yet looking forward to the same.

“Hold on, isn’t the reanimation jutsu forbidden?”, a voice drawled at the door. 

Naruto squinted at Shikamaru, who had been standing there. “Hey Shikamaru. Whaddya mean reanimation?”. 

Shikamaru turned to Kakashi. “Lord Hokage, there seems to be a zombie in the office, but don’t worry, I’ll take care of it”.

Kakashi sighed. He didn't have the patience for bad jokes that morning. “Regarding your next mission, Naruto, this is going to be a tough one”. 

Naruto was still three steps behind the rest of the room. “Wha- A zombie? What?”.

Kakashi cleared his throat. “He means you, Naruto. You look like you haven’t been sleeping very well.. or.. at all”.

Naruto’s furrowed brows cleared as the penny dropped. “Oh. That’s pretty funny Shikamaru”, he said in a deadpan voice. Not that he was trying to be sarcastic, he was just too tired to laugh. “Alright, Lord Hokage. Hit me with the details of this mission”.

Kakashi raised an eyebrow at being addressed so formally, probably sniffing around for sarcasm, but when his ninja-hound level nose didn’t find any, he looked down at the papers in his hand. 

“This mission is a bit.. outside your usual comfort zone. But Shikamaru here convinced me to assign it to you. Something about the future hokage needing to demonstrate proficiency in every kind of mission.” Naruto suppressed a groan. Shikamaru was probably right as usual of course, but extra difficulty was the last thing he was looking for right now. He resolved to sleep for a week straight after finishing this one. 

“I could switch with you, you know”, a gruff voice whispered into his mind. Closing his eyes, he looked up at the massive bulk of his resident nine tailed best friend, Kurama, who had stayed in his body almost rent free for all of his life. “You could rest leisurely and I could finish your mission for you. It would give me a chance to stretch my muscles a little too”. Naruto suppressed a wishful smile. “That sounds tempting, but an important point of these missions is for me to improve as well, ya know? There’s no point if I just let you do all the work, is there?”.

Kurama exhaled loudly. “You’re too hard on yourself. One of these days you’re going to fall asleep in the middle of a battle, and don’t come crying to me then”. Naruto patted his orange fur good naturedly. “I promise this will be the last one. Then I’ll have a nice long nap and you see if even you can wake me up from that”. “….did you get all that?”, Kakashi’s voice echoed from outside Naruto’s mindscape. 

Naruto’s eyes flew open. “Yeah! Yes sir, believe it!”. Both Shikamaru and Kakashi raised an eyebrow at that. Naruto groaned internally and spun around as Kakashi said, “So you’ll be leaving in the evening then? That should give you enough time to get packed”.

Naruto didn’t betray a single ounce of the confusion that he felt. He knew that doing so would reveal that he hadn’t been paying attention, and that would get him benched for sure until he was in a better state of mind .

As he walked out of the office that he was working so hard to one day earn, he heard the door closing behind him as Shikamaru walked out as well. 

“You didn’t catch any of that, did you?”. 

“No”, Naruto groaned remorsefully. 

Shikamaru sighed as they both walked down the hallway. “What would you do without me?”.

“Probably look like an idiot, but I’m used to that. Now fill me in already”. The volume of his tone decreased as he discussed the confidential details of the mission. 

“This mission is primarily infiltration and information gathering”.

Naruto groaned once more. So that was why Kakashi had described it as ‘outside his comfort zone’. 

“We’ve received word from the hidden cloud that there have been instances of some of the more.. unstable shinobi of the cloud rejecting the peace of the new era and refusing to forgive the other hidden villages for their roles in the previous wars. At least a few squads of these shinobi, estimated to be between three and five squads, have gone rogue and have escaped the cloud with some powerful stolen jutsu".

Naruto nodded with his eyes closed, and Shikamaru took a second to make sure he was listening and not sleeping, before he continued.

"Ordinarily this would be an internal hidden cloud matter, but one squad was spotted in the land of fire a few days ago, far closer to the hidden leaf than we’d like. I know combat is your specialty naruto, but the goal of this mission is infiltration, not fighting. We need to find the location of the other two, or four squads, and once we’ve confirmed a lock on all of their positions, we’ll swoop in and take them all down at once, and recover the stolen jutsu”. 

Naruto’s face twisted in confusion as his mind ran with questions. “Hang on. How could the cloud not even know for sure how many of their shinobi went rogue? Seems kinda foolish to me. Old man Raikage’s getting slow”. 

Shikamaru replied, “That is a good question, and one that I asked myself. But the cloud village hasn’t sent an answer yet, and the details of the message as received from their messenger hawk seemed almost.. intentionally vague, like they were hiding something, or at least omitting something important". 

"Why would they-" he began, before Shikamaru cut him off.

"Additionally, the lookouts that spotted the squad reported overhearing them talking about confidential Hidden leaf information, which is worrying. There should be no way for some rogue cloud shinobi to know such details about the Leaf’s military strength and infrastructure. Kakashi suspects that there’s more going on here than what they’re telling us."

Naruto swallowed his questions and resigned himself to listening

"Plus, we still don’t know the nature of the jutsu they stole", Shikamaru continued. "If it’s something like a powerful forbidden jutsu, we could lose shinobi by underestimating the threat. That’s why he's sending out someone as powerful as you, and it’ll be a feather in your cap in terms of infiltration experience and missions finished. I’m sure you can handle it, you are the leaf’s very best combat specialist after all”.

“After Sasuke, you mean”, Naruto interjected. 

Shikamaru shrugged as they climbed down the stairs back into the village center. “That could be debated”. 

“You’ll be masquerading as a rogue shinobi formerly from the leaf, someone that’s similarly discontented with the peace we’ve established. You’re definitely going to have to use the transformation justu for this one, your face and description is just too well known in the shinobi world”.

Naruto nodded as they turned the corner of the road. “But they aren’t just gonna trust me like that, aren’t they?”. 

Shikamaru nodded. “You’re right, they won’t. Which is why we’ll be sending you with an offering”. 

As the two of them stopped in front of a door, Shikamaru pulled a small scroll out of his pack and unrolled it, handing it to Naruto. Naruto’s eyes scanned through it quickly before he exclaimed “Hey, these are jutsu from the scroll of seals I stole when I was a kid!”. 

Shikamaru nodded as he rang the doorbell of the house they stood in front of. “They’re meant to look like them, true, but look closely”.

Naruto squinted and re examined the scroll as Shikamaru spoke. 

“There are small differences everywhere. Differences you’d only recognise if you were already familiar with the relevant jutsu. None of those jutsu would work if you tried to perform them in the way demonstrated in that scroll”. 

Naruto nodded as he understood. “That’s clever”.

Shikamaru nodded as he rung the doorbell again. “They’d need to be at least jonin rank, or higher, to even comprehend most of them. And from what we’ve heard from the cloud, most of the rogue shinobi were chunin”. He rang the doorbell once more.

“Hey, whose bell are you ringing anyway?”, asked naruto, as he rolled up the fake scroll and looked up, before exclaiming in recognition, “Hey, this is Sakura’s place!”.

“Yep”, said Shikamaru. “She must not be home right now. Sakura’s accompanying you on this mission”. 

“Accompanying him on what mission?”, said a familiar voice behind both of them. 

“Sakura!”, exclaimed naruto, turning around. “The two of us on the same squad again… it’ll be just like old times!”. 

Sakura examined Naruto’s face before sardonically saying “As a matter of fact you don’t look fit for a mission at all. I’d recommend at least a day of sleep if you don’t wanna doze off in the middle of a fight”. 

Fighting off the urge to make an annoyed expression Naruto grumbled, “I know, I know, Kurama already warned me of that exact thing, ya know. I’ll be sure to stay extra awake during any battles”. 

Shikamaru turned to Naruto. “Pack supplies for a few days and assemble at the gate by evening. I’ll fill in Sakura on the details”. 

Naruto nodded and began walking back to his place, thoughts jumbling around in his mind. An infiltration mission. He would have to study up on the jutsu that would help him with that. A rasengan wouldn’t do anything to help keep him hidden among enemies; In fact, it would only give away his identity. To his knowledge Kakashi, Konohamaru and himself were the only ones capable of performing it. Would he even be able to use it without instantly giving away his identity? The actual number of people that had seen the jutsu itself was relatively few, but then again everyone had seen everything during the war. Thoughts racing, he began to pack. 

Half a day, a bowl of ramen and several discussions with Shikamaru and Sakura later, Naruto thought he had a fairly good understanding of the mission. Infiltrate the squad of rogue shinobi, relay the location of the other squads, recover the stolen jutsu, and help bring them all down. Nice, neat and tidy. Sakura was coming along to be the ‘brains of the operation’, in Shikamaru’s words, with no small grumbling on Naruto’s part on the implication that he wasn’t smart enough to pull off the deception himself.That particular objection was finally silenced by Sakura’s thunderous expression. Ultimately, however, it would just be the two of them on the mission. 

Shikamaru wanted to keep the number as low as possible, he explained, as too many shinobi going rogue from the hidden leaf would be treated with suspicion, and moreover, there was the wild card factor of the total unknown of the jutsu that was stolen from the cloud. If it was a powerful forbidden justu on the level of the reanimation jutsu or the reaper death seal, it would be very difficult to deal with; Unless of course, you happened to already be at a level of strength comparable to even the legendary sannin. Which was another reason why he was sending the leaf’s premier medical shinobi along, norwithstanding the fact that, again, in Shikamaru's words, Sakura could be trusted to use her common sense. 

Additionally, he thought, and Kakashi agreed, Naruto and Sakura were used to working alongside each other, which made them the best logical pairing for the mission while minimising the number of required shinobi and at the same time maximising eficiency. No matter how powerful the enemy was, he was confident that if it came down to it the two of them would have no difficulty bringing down all the rogue shinobi themselves. He had seen them handle the ten tails after all, he knew just what they were capable of.

This was essentially a non-critical and low-stakes mission, despite the unknown risk posed by the stolen jutsu, when compared to who he was sending into their midst.

Shikamaru was not very worried, even with Naruto being at such a low level of performance. The evasiveness of the cloud about the mission info still bothered him, and he did have his own hunches about that, but even if he were right, it still wouldn’t increase the risk that the mission posed, according to his calculations. Shikamaru liked to plan for every eventuality. 

Seemingly having accounted for everything, the three of them stood at the gates of the leaf village, ready to leave.

“Alright, so first off, you’ll need your transformations in order. Fake names and cover stories, please”.

Naruto thought for a moment and made a hand sign before transforming in a column of smoke. The smoke cleared to reveal a familiar face.

Shikamaru put his hand to his chin, before nodding. “Yeah, I think that’ll work. Since he was imprisoned before the war and broke out once too, not only did he actually go rogue, he’ll probably be completely unknown to the cloud shinobi. Good thinking, Naruto”. 

Naruto, wearing the face of his two time enemy, Mizuki, the very first threat he had ever defeated with his shadow clone jutsu, nodded and flashed a smile. 

“I don’t remember him ever smiling that broadly though”, Sakura commented. 

“Well, you heard Shikamaru!”, retorted naruto, “He’s probably completely unknown to them”.

“Probably”, added Shikamaru. “Just in case, you’d better play the part properly. Alright Sakura, how about you?”.

Sakura’s eyebrows furrowed as she ran through the list of plausible disguises in her head before settling on one. She made the hand sign, and transformed in a flash. Naruto and Shikamaru stared at the transformed Sakura with complete unfamiliarity, trying to place the vaguely familiar face that she wore. 

After a few seconds, Shikamaru broke the silence. “I’m lost. Who is this?”. 

Sakura grinned like it was an inside joke. “Come on, Naruto, use that thick skull of yours”. Naruto frowned as he tried to place the face he had definitely seen somewhere before. Sakura sighed. “It’s Mr.Tazuna’s daughter. You remember? The old bridge builder in the Land of Waves?”. Naruto’s face broke into a grin as he finally placed the features. 

“Of course! Heh, I never would’ve guessed. I wonder how lil’ Inari is doing by now”.

“He’s probably at least as tall as you now, not exactly ‘lil’ anymore”, Sakura countered with a smirk. 

“Alright alright”, Shikamaru interjected, “Both your disguises should be uncrecognisable. Good job. The difficult part will be maintaining them for days continuously, but that should be no problem for shinobi as proficient in chakra control as you two. So, to recap, you are to infiltrate ....". 

Naruto zoned out as Shikamaru droned on about the mission. His eyelids drooped as his mind wandered. He idly wondered what Gaara was up to these days. It had been soooo looong since he had had hung out with everyone without having to worry about when the next mission was. Unbidden, an image of Choji stuffing his face with meat at the same rate that Naruto did with ramen rose to the forefront of his mind, and he smiled at the memory. 

-until we can bring them all down at once". Shikamaru's voice snapped him out of his sweet haze of memory. 

"The last part is important. We don’t want them to know they’re being hunted until it’s too late for them to strike back. We don’t want them deciding to use their stolen justu in a last resort counter offensive. I bet a group like this, that’s discontented with a peaceful world will be looking to change it somehow, either by looking for like-minded people, or somehow destabilising the peace themselves. You should be prepared to be with that group for a few days, assuming they buy your story and take you to meet the other squads”.

Naruto nodded several times, realised he was probably nodding too much, and stopped. Shikamaru and Sakura looked at him for a second, exasperated, before Shikamaru continued

“What they’re doing so close to the leaf, and the vagueness of the cloud’s intel .. These things still worry me, but nothing in this neck of the land is strong enough to even inconvenience the two of you, I think, so whatever it is I’m sure you both can handle it”. Naruto and Sakura nodded as one, and this time Naruto understood his words perfectly. 

“Right then, that’s about it. You’ll be using fake names, I assume”.

Naruto thought for a moment. “Why? I could just go by Mizuki. It’s not like the real Mizuki is anywhere nearby anyway. Isn’t he in prison?”. 

Shikamaru nodded. “That could work. What about you, Sakura?”. “How about…. Hmm… Kaguya?”. 

Both of them stared at her dumbfounded. 

“What? It’s the first name that popped into my head. And it’s not too rare either”. 

Shikamaru shrugged. “Alright then. Mizuki, Kaguya. We’ll be keeping in contact with you via Sai’s non traceable ink messengers. Good luck, and remember, this is infiltration. That means you can’t just beat them through a wall when you see them”. Naruto grumbled “I know what infiltration is, ya know”. “And Sakura, that means no beating Naruto through a wall either”. Sakura smiled, “That depends entirely on Naruto”.

Naruto gulped and resolved to try and stay completely awake and razor focused till the mission was done. Kurama shook his head in resignation, listening from within. It seemed he would have to cover for Naruto's incompetence, like old times. 

Shaking his head to clear it, Naruto smiled. The mission ahead seemed exciting even otherwise, being part of a squad of rogue ninja for a while. Though he tried to imagine what that would be like, there was no way he could realise that the mission he was about to embark upon would lead him to old nightmares, more lack of physical coordination than most slapstick comedy, and the most challenging opponent he had ever faced since Sasuke, and ultimately cause him to have to take his past into his own hands. The trio nodded at each other, and like a pair of shadows, Naruto and Sakura vanished into the woods.


	2. Cracks in the Peace, Consequences of the War

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realise that that this prologue arc is getting longer than I thought it would, but having started it I want to do it properly before we get to the time travel bit.

Naruto and Sakura darted from branch to branch, getting closer to the location that the rogue ninja had been spotted with each leap. The rhythm of the jump, land, jump, land, settled into comfortable background noise. The rushing wind blowing into their faces, the deafening whistling sound of the air they raced past; As always, the speed and thrill of being on a mission certain to see even more action brought a smile to Naruto’s face. He idly wondered what kind of food the squad of rogue ninja would give them once they were travelling together. Minutes passed slower than the surrounding trees did as they moved through their branches with a years-practiced accuracy.

“Say,” began Naruto, when Sakura shot him a look. 

“We’re in enemy territory now”, she said. “Don’t speak carelessly, you don’t know who’s listening”. 

Naruto opened his mouth to protest but then thought better of it. The last thing he wanted to do was ruin his cover and blow the entire mission by saying something that Mizuki wouldn’t. Trying to recall his speech and mannerisms, Naruto’s senses dimly picked up the presence of the leaf lookout that reported the rogue shinobi in the first place, as they leapt through the trees . “Oh hey, that’s the scout. We should go ask them for information”, said Naruto, and sprang away before Sakura had a chance to open her mouth. 

He landed in front of the two shinobi, his sudden appearance startling them both.

“Who’s there?”, one said, while the other just examined Naruto wordlessly. 

“Hey guys, we’re here to investigate that report you sent about those rogue ninja”, said Naruto, as the one who had challenged Naruto stepped back, seeming confused.

“Well-”, he began, when Sakura emerged from behind him without a sound, kunai in hand, and swung at him. 

The other shinobi intercepted effortlessly with his own kunai. 

Naruto was thrown aback. 

The old Naruto would’ve wasted time wondering what was going on, but this Naruto, a veteran of the Fourth Great ninja war, assessed the situation in the span of time it took the sparks that emerged from both kunai to fade. Why had Sakura attacked them? All Naruto had done was ask a question. The answer came to him in a flash. Of course! He was still disguised as Mizuki!

Naruto swore internally as Kurama chided him, “Naruto, a mistake on the battlefield can get you killed. What were you thinking?”. He had nearly blown their collective cover by almost revealing himself. He smacked himself internally and vowed to get some proper sleep once this was all over. 

If any of the rogue shinobi had been watching him act like a leaf shinobi, they would’ve realised right away what was going on. Thanks to Sakura’s quick thinking however, she made it seem like Naruto distracting the lookout was just a setup to allow her to attack him, keeping to their cover of being rogue ninja themselves. But due to his blundering into the situation without thinking, they would have to go through some unnecessary combat just to maintain their cover. 

Sakura would probably clock him in the face for that later, and he would deserve it, but for now he had to find a way to escape the situation with their cover intact. Sakura dueled the second lookout, rather unusually using a kunai instead of the wide bore weapons that were her fists, but Naruto realised she was doing this for the same reason he had resolved not to use the rasengan; Her monster strength was just too much of a giveaway. That, and the fact that they didn’t actually want to kill a pair of leaf ninja. 

He was certain she was going easy on the lookout, as she moved far slower than her actual speed to stay at a level he could keep up with. Naruto realised he would have to do the same. Meanwhile, the first lookout had recovered from the surprise and was charging Naruto. 

Naruto leapt out of his way nimbly, and refrained from attacking him in the opening he had when the lookout was barelling past him. He couldn’t give away his true skill level, not now when they were in the territory where their targets had been spotted. They dueled wordlessly for a few minutes before the two lookouts disengaged and stood next to each other at a distance. 

Sakura and Naruto did the same, and Sakura whispered into his ear, “These guys are leaf shinobi, why haven’t they recognised your disguise yet? They must have at least known Mizuki’s face. Something isn’t right”. 

Naruto nodded as he marked the truth in her words. He gazed at the pair of lookouts carefully, as they did the same to him. The silence was suddenly broken by sharp laughter.

The second lookout, the one who had initially intercepted Sakura, was laughing cockily. 

“What’s so funny?!”, Naruto yelled out. 

The lookout wiped his eyes. “Attacking a pair of scouts from the Hidden Leaf. Kinda suicidal for a pair of rogue ninja, aren’t you?”, he asked.

Sakura yelled back with equal snark, “Attacking a pair of rogue ninja from the Leaf, kinda suicidal for a pair of scouts, aren’t you”. 

The lookout burst into laughter once more. “Oh, this is rich”, the scout said. 

“Here we were, posing as the lookouts we killed, and there you come, wantin to go rogue from yer village, trying to kill us, thinking we were those guys. That’s hilarious”. 

Slowly, Naruto put two and two together, and his temper flared, figuring out who was standing across him. These men were no lookouts. They were foes who had murdered fellow leaf shinobi. Forcing a breath, he willed himself to keep his composure. The fake lookout, meanwhile, had resumed talking in his leisurely drawl. 

“Your behaviour was a dead giveaway though. First you come in”, he said, pointing at Naruto, “In broad daylight, as if you have every right to be there. No surprise attack, no nothing, almost as if you expected not to be attacked at all. And then she glides in, silent as an owl, and tries to murder my pal over here by stabbing him in the back”. He gave another short, sharp laugh. 

“That you’re from the leaf was obvious in how sure you were that you wouldn’t be attacked, waltzing in so carelessly. As if you were expecting the scout to know ya, and of course, we could tell you weren't actually leaf shinobi when your partner tried to kill us. But the way you acted all pally first, makes me think that you lot expected the village to still trust ya, which means they don’t know you’ve gone rogue yet". The man crossed his arms with a proud expression on his face. "Face it, shrimps. I’ve got you all figured out”. 

Naruto grinned internally. It seemed his screw up had strengthened their cover somehow. 

“And you must be those rogue cloud ninja they reported, huh”. 

Both lookouts made a hand sign and released their transformation jutsu in a puff of smoke to reveal two men in the white vests of the cloud. 

“Cloud shinobi no longer”, said the first, a short fellow with orange hair. His partner, a taller, more athletic type, with blond hair, stepped forward and broadened his smile. “That brings us to the issue of whether we have to kill you or not”.

Sakura stepped forward a pace, putting away her kunai. “If you’re not the leaf shinobi we thought you were, there’s no reason for us to quarrel. In fact, we were looking for you. It was your defection that spurred us to go rogue”. 

“Oh?”, answered the taller one, sounding intrigued. “I’m intrigued”, he said. “Continue”. 

“According to the information we were able to access, your reason for leaving the cloud… You’re unhappy with the world the kage have created, aren’t you?”. 

The blond shinobi narrowed his eyes, while the orange haired one spoke up. “Damn right we are. We’ve risked our lives for our village ever since we were genin. I’ve had friends and family ruthlessly cut down by the hidden leaf and the other villages. And then the Great war rolled around and we all got to find out firsthand just how powerless we all are; Just how little all our sacrifices mean”. 

A quiet rage was shining in the eyes of the larger fellow as he seemingly began to get carried away by the passion of his words. “What was the point of all those battles, all those missions, all that training and death, if that bastard Madara Uchiha could swat us all like flies with a single attack, and all of us.. All of us without exception…. Absolutely powerless to do anything about it”. 

His partner interrupted him, “Not Lord Killer Bee though, he was able to fight alongside the rest of them!”. His voice almost carried a tone of admiration. 

“Yeah”, agreed the second shinobi. “Lord Bee could stand with the best of them, even when that coward, the Raikage couldn’t. But he’s been blinded by the sweet words and smiles of the leaf, and their terrifying weapon, Naruto Uzumaki”.

Naruto gulped. 

The shinobi continued, “We all saw it clear as day during the war. All of our power and 'will' meant absolutely nothing. The difference between us was so great that we might as well have not even existed. The only ones who were able to face down the threat were that Naruto Uzumaki, and that other Uchiha. Both from the leaf. It was so clear how large the gap in power was". He shook his head with disbelief. "The hidden leaf could have destroyed the cloud at any time with that kind of power. All our training, our loyalty, our lives… it would’ve meant nothing, just like it did against that blasted ten tails”. 

“And yet somehow”, interjected the other one, “Instead of seeing that overwhelming power as the threat it is, the Raikage and every other stinking kage, have embraced the leaf and the terrifying demons they call shinobi with open arms”. He spat. “What hypocrisy. What a way to say that our effort doesn’t matter, only their power does. I mean come on! It was one of those very ninja, one of them crazy strong leaf ninja, who started the entire war in the first place! Madara Uchiha!". 

He shook his head once more. "And now that the leaf has a whole bunch of new Madaras we're supposed to hold hands and play nice? How could they be so quick to partner with them? Those same villages killed our men and even worked with the likes of the Akatsuki in the past! It’s no partnership of equals! It's a bloody farce!"

His grimace turned into a baleful smile that betrayed seething rage. "I’m sure that Uchiha could raze our village in a day, just like Madara did to the Allied Forces”. 

Naruto could stand having to keep his calm with a bunch of murderers for the sake of the mission, but a character assassination of Sasuke was more than he could take. He opened his mouth to argue and suddenly felt the white hot laser glare of Sakura’s gaze boring into his head. He shut his mouth. He had already screwed up once on this mission. That was already one too many mistakes. 

“We’ve bled and died for our village, and in one fell swoop, the Raikage rendered all that meaningless, acting as if all those conflicts simply don’t matter any more. What, did they really think one emotional speech from the Kazekage was enough to just erase the hatred between us? People that have lost family at each other’s hands?”. He wiped away an imaginary tear before sneering. "Spare me" 

Though still angry, Naruto chose his words carefully. “Didn’t you all share your chakra with each other during the war? Didn’t every shinobi treat everyone else as their own? Didn’t Naruto himself share the nine-tail's chakra with the entire Allied forces? I was there during the great war, and I know for a fact, a lot more people would have died if Naruto and Sasuke hadn’t been around”. 

Sakura bit her lip. Mizuki had been imprisoned during the war, and Naruto was breaking cover here. Thankfully however, they didn't seem to know any of that.

The second rogue shinobi replied, “Yeah I know, I was there too. Do you know how painful it is to have to rely on the mercy of some enemy shinobi with the power of a god, to keep you alive against another enemy shinobi with the power of a god? Ugh!", he swore. "To run around like ants on a battlefield where giants stomp around. To have your own power, and training, mean nothing? To have your WHOLE VILLAGE, reduced to nothing? What happens if Naruto or that ‘Sasuke’ have a change of heart? What happens to the world then? They’re from the same village that has killed a countless number of our shinobi in years past, after all. We could barely stand up to Madara with all the kage AND the tailed beasts on our side. What happens when the enemy is the one they’ve befriended, the one they won’t fight against? The ones who are even stronger than Madara".

He shuddered, but regained his composure a second later. "If they really think a single war is enough to wipe out hundreds of years of bloodshed, especially now when just one village holds so much more power than any of the others could ever hope to have…. And none of them, not one of those kage see them as the threat they are. If those two decided to take over the world, there’s absolutely no one who could stop them”. 

Naruto didn’t know what to say. 

“Yeah, no one except Lord Kazuma”, continued his partner. “He’s the-”, but was interrputed with a slap before he could finish. “Shut up, you idiot. We don’t know that these shinobi can be trusted yet”. 

“Lord Kazuma? Who’s that?”, asked Sakura, as the slapped ninja rubbed his face reproachfully.

The blond shinobi drew a short sword from its sheath and smiled. “Lord Kazuma is the only one who sees the fragility and unfairness of this world that the kage and those two gods created". He spat the word 'god' like he was referring to unspeakable evil. "At least, he's the only one that’s powerful enough to do something about it", he continued. "He won’t let the hidden leaf and the rest of the kage traipse around arm in arm and just pretend like everyone who died in the wars between the villages died for nothing. He won’t let Naruto Uzumaki and that Uchiha rule the entire world from the shadows, in the guise of friendship or peace."

"He can make all of us powerful, actually powerful! Give us jutsu that would make all our training and effort mean something again! I didn’t want to betray my village, but the village that it has turned into, one that grovels and relies on 'their' goodwill just to survive… It’s no longer the same proud village that once stole jutsu from them in defiance of their power. My comrades who died at the hands of the leaf.. they didn’t die for this. For their sake and my own, we’ll change things. The cowardly cloud doesn’t deserve what we stole for them back then. So we stole them back. We’re taking them to someone who can actually use them to change this twisted world for the better; Lord Kazuma". 

"Hey", his partner protested. "Why'd you slap me if you were gonna tell 'em everything anyway, ya dolt?". 

Still smiling, the shinobi answered. "Oh, we don't have to worry about them talking. Corpses are awfully silent", and without warning, he leapt forward and struck at Naruto with his blade. 

Sakura intercepted him in an eerie echo of how he intercepted her initial blow against his partner. As they struggled against each other (In sakura’s case, pretended to struggle), Sakura spoke.

“You think I don’t know how it feels like to be weak? You think I don’t know what it feels like to have to always rely on others to save you?”. 

The anger and frustration in her voice was so real that Naruto’s eyes widened. It felt like Sakura was talking about something that truly anguished her.

“I’ve had to deal with that feeling my entire life. With two teammates and a sensei who were always stronger than me, they always had to save me from everything. I had to rely on their strength so that I could keep searching for mine. I know far too well how painful that is.. That feeling that keeps eating away at you… It’s hard to argue with the voice calling you useless when it’s your own. When it keeps calling you a burden to your squad. When you only ever slow them down... you begin to think they'd be better off if you weren't around”. 

For the second time that day, Naruto didn’t know what to say, frozen in shock. He had never realised that Sakura had been so troubled by this. 

The cloud shinobi jumped back, absorbing her words. Sakura continued, “I used to feel like that all the time once, long ago. Then I trained, and studied, and trained, so that I’d never have to feel that way ever again. So that I would be an asset to the team that had saved me so many times; So that I could be the one to save them, for a change”. 

She smiled broadly, as the cloud shinobi said, “What are you getting at?”.

“What I’m saying”, said Sakura, “Is that we left for the same reason you did”. Naruto relaxed a little as he realised she was back to lying now instead of speaking what she actually felt. That had been a bit intense, and worrying too. 

“The war showed me how useless we all were”, she continued, parroting his words, “how pointless all our training was against someone like Madara. There’s no real point in staying in a village that already has the two, uh, gods, that took him down. It’s a constant reminder that we’re not needed, that we’ll never be appreciated for our effort or loyalty. A reminder of how little we actually matter to the village. They don't really need us, they never have”. 

“Yeah, in spite of all that I did for the hidden leaf", interjected Naruto, "Going the extra mile for their missions, despite all my years of service, they held back on promoting me because I decided to prioritise their damned mission over some injured teammate. Because I put their damned village first!”, he continued, in an inspired moment of recalling Mizuki’s words that he had heard during their last confrontation, years ago. 

Sakura cringed a little at his effort to swear and sound angry. 

“And then we heard about you!”, he continued, picking up up where sakura left off. “A bunch of shinobi who are unhappy with how the world is and took for themselves the power to change it! We want to join you!”. 

The cloud shinobi regarded them with skepticism in his eyes, but didn’t sheathe his short sword. 

Sakura stepped forward. “If you don’t believe us, we stole some jutsu from our village as well”. She pulled out the scroll containing the fake jutsu from Naruto’s pack in a fluid motion. “This contains jutsu from the scroll of seals, probably some kind of forbidden jutsu. We don’t really understand it ourselves, but whoever this Lord Kazuma is, he’s probably skilled enough to make use of them”. 

The blond shinobi did not move, while his partner walked up to sakura carefully, one hand on a kunai, and reached for the scroll.

There was a moment of tension when Sakura refused to let it go, but it passed and the shinobi walked back to his partner with it.

“Was it really a good idea to just give it to him?”, asked Naruto silently.

“It’s called building trust, Mizuki”, replied Sakura.

Naruto was stymied for a moment before once again remembering that it was his fake name. “Right”, he replied. 

The orange haired shinobi unfurled the scroll and studied it carefully. His partner continued holding his blade aloft, keeping Naruto and Sakura in his sights. Minutes ticked by inaudibly since there are no clocks that make any sort of ticking sound in the forest. The only sound was the sound of wind rustling through the leaves. Naruto tried to swallow but his throat was too dry to do so. Even though he could easily take the two of them, it was still nerve wracking to see whether they would buy their story or not. 

After what seemed like more minutes, but was probably just seconds, the shinobi studying the scroll vanished into the trees.

“Wha-” began naruto, but was interrupted by his abrupt return. 

The scroll itself was nowhere to be seen. “He says to get rid of them”, the orange haired one said. “And he said no more going easy on them either. To fight them with our real strength”. 

The blond one grinned.

Naruto and Sakura both tensed as both cloud shinobi began to weave hand signs.

The blond shinobi darted at Sakura. This time, his short sword crackled with lightning. 

As Sakura raised her kunai to block, Naruto saw the other one make a tiger hand sign and then press his hands to the ground, and heard him say, “Fire style, Blazing wall!”. 

The ground below naruto’s feet, or more accurately, the tree bark he stood on, began to glow with an orange heat, and as time slowed down, he saw out of the corner of his eye as the lightning enhanced blade of the other shinobi cleanly sliced through sakura’s kunai, and cut into her arm.


	3. The nightmare unfolds, Kazuma's power

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason I've been unable to access Ao3 for the last few days, I'm not sure why. I'm using TOR to see if it's an issue with my network, and that seems to work. Also I'm losing control of the length of this arc but I swear I'm trying to wrap it up as fast as I can.

Sakura took the damage without so much as a whimper escaping from her lips, and darted out of range before the sword could do much more than nick her. Naruto meanwhile, had similarly noticed the justu taking effect below his feet, and leapt backwards as a pillar of flame burst upwards where he had been standing. 

“Ha! It seems that you were holding back on us as well! Excellent, this might actually be fun”, the blond haired shinobi remarked, holding aloft his crackling blade. 

The orange haired one weaved three more handsigns, and the areas beside the flaming pillar also began to glow with heat, with more pillars springing into existence until, true to the jutsu’s name, a wall of fire stood between naruto and the others. Sakura ended up on the other side of the wall with the two cloud shinobi, but Naruto knew better than to worry about her. She could take care of herself. 

“My blazing wall justu is completely impassable! No one has ever broken through it without getting burned! You’re out of your league, leaf shinobi!”, the shorter rogue ninja yelled. 

Naruto couldn’t see him through the wall, but before moving he mentally acknowledged the usefulness of a jutsu like the one he currently faced. 

It forced the opponent to play into the hands of the jutsu’s user, leaving them with only two choices. Either they could go around the wall, which the user would be expecting and probably would have prepared for, forcing Naruto into taking a blind corner, or else they would have to charge straight through the fire, which would no doubt injure them severely.

“What’s the matter? Scared? If you won’t move then I’ll burn you alive!”.

With those words, the wall began to advance towards him. Naruto gritted his teeth in annoyance. Usually this would be no trouble at all. The nine tails cloak protected him from pretty much all physical damage, and even from things like fire. Usually he would be able to brazenly walk through the wall. It wouldn’t even be an obstacle for him. But because he couldn’t use any of his signature techniques without giving himself away, he was being forced to devote actual thought to getting around even an obstacle as easy as this one. 

Mentally running through his options, he chose the simplest one and simply ran sideways to the underside of the massive tree branch they were all battling on, running along it until he was right beneath the cloud shinobi casting the jutsu. The wall of fire had a pretty big disadvantage. You couldn’t see them through it, true, but they couldn’t see you either. 

Naruto burst through the bark of the tree, uppercutting the shinobi in his chin, much like he had done to Neji in during the chunin exams, and the rogue ninja was thrown upwards, crashing through several branches and flying out of the forest’s canopy. 

“Naruto!”, Kurama scolded. 

Naruto bit his tongue. “I used too much strength, didn’t I?”.

“Maybe I should regulate your chakra for you, since you seem to be so incompetent with it”, Kurama continued. 

They heard a crash as the shinobi fell back through the branches, landing in another tree not too far away. While turning to look at his landing, Naruto noticed Sakura still dueling the taller one. 

He was swinging his sword in short, precise strokes, seemingly keeping his cool despite his cockiness, but Sakura had found a way to counter it without resorting to her signature one hit ko style of fighting. 

Naruto’s eyes widened as the shinobi swung once again, and Sakura caught the blow on her hand, deflecting it. 

Her hands were covered in a carefully focused coat of chakra, sharp enough to turn aside a lightning infused blade. Naruto abruptly realised that Sakura was using the same technique that Mifune and his samurai used with their swords, only she was enhancing her hands instead, like Kabuto used to with his chakra scalpel jutsu. 

Naruto watched as Sakura caught the blade against one hand, and then struck sharply downwards at its midpoint with the other, snapping it cleanly in two. 

The cloud shinobi paled and stepped back, drawing a kunai, but Sakura extinguished the chakra covering her hands, and simply said, “It’s over”. 

With a fearful gaze at both of them, the cloud shinobi jumped over to the tree where his comrade had fallen, and began whispering to him as he tried to prop him up. 

Naruto winced. “I think I might have injured him a bit. I kinda got carried away there”. 

Sakura gave him a withering glare. “Honestly, Na- Mizuki. You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?”. 

Not giving him a chance to reply, Sakura leapt over to where the cloud shinobi were. “It’s alright, we don’t want to hurt you. Like I said earlier, we came here because we wanted to join you”.

The cloud shinobi, holding his unconscious teammate aloft, a kunai still drawn in his other hand, did not relax at her words. 

*Clap. clap. clap.* 

From within the trees, slow applause rang. 

Naruto and Saukra instantly went on guard, as the cloud shinobi visibly relaxed. 

“Marvellous. What a stirring performance. What skill, what speed. Bravo!”. 

The silhouette of a man emerged, walking out of the shadows. He wore no headband, but he did sport the red vest of the hidden stone. Lanky and gaunt, his eyes had a strange apathy to them. In his left hand, he held the fake scroll of seals. 

“Who are you?”, Naruto called out.

The stranger jumped over to the two cloud shinobi, and smacked the conscious one lightly on the head. “Underestimating your opponents. Dimwit”.

The cloud shinobi winced. The man turned back to Naruto and Sakura. 

“I am Kitetsu, or at least, that is the name you may refer to me as. I am the leader of this three man squad, and it appears I’m saddled with two unfortunately incompetent teammates”. He turned back around at them. “And after all the trouble I went to to fetch you from the hidden cloud, too”. He turned back to Naruto and Sakura. 

“I’m Lord Kazuma’s envoy!”, he said brightly. “I take it you’ve already gathered who Lord Kazuma is from these two dolts and their inability to keep their mouths shut, but judging from this scroll, luckily, there was no harm done. Lord Kazuma will be very grateful for this jutsu from the scroll of seals. We would be glad to have you join our cause!”. 

Naruto was confused and it showed on his face. “Hold on, if you were going to let us join, why’d your buddies try to kill us just now?”. 

Kitetsu chuckled. “Oh, that was just a little test of strength to make sure that you two could handle yourselves in a battle. You’re no use to Lord Kazuma if you couldn’t even put up a decent fight against these two”. 

The unconscious shinobi groaned once more, and Sakura said, “I’m a medical shinobi, I can treat your friend”. 

The cloud shinobi looked at Kitetsu for approval, who nodded. He made way for Sakura who walked up to the fainted man and began performing medical ninjutsu on him. She would occasionally shoot annoyed glances at Naruto whenever she came across a particularly damaged area. 

Naruto smiled sheepishly, hoping to get away with this unscathed somehow, when Kitetsu spoke again.

“You two intrigue me. A medical shinobi going rogue isn’t something you hear about very often. The skill both of you exhibited during that battle, I’d say you’re both chunin to jonin rank at least. Tell me, what are your names?”. 

Naruto opened his mouth to answer, but at the last second thought better of it. “How do we know Kitetsu is your real name?”. 

Kitetsu laughed. “It isn’t, but you’re the ones trying to join my organisation, not the other way around. You’re going to have to tell me your names if you want to join”. 

Naruto grumbled. “Fine. I’m Mizuki, and that’s Kaguya”.

Kitetsu put a hand to his chin. “Interesting….”. 

Unprompted, Shikamaru’s words echoed in Naruto’s mind. “….overhearing them talking about confidential Hidden leaf information. There should be no way for some rogue shinobi to know such details about the Leaf’s military strength. Kakashi suspects that there’s more going on here than what they’re telling us….”. A chill ran down Naruto’s spine. 

Kitetsu spoke, “There were no Kaguyas or Mizukis in the latest version of the hidden leaf’s shinobi database”.

Sakura tensed invisibly.

“Which either means that you two aren’t who you say you are...”.

Naruto silently readied his chakra.

“….Or the both of you are ANBU”. 

Naruto froze. He hadn’t been expecting that.

“Either way, both of you are extremely suspicious, I think you’ll have to agree. If it weren’t for the genuineness of the jutsu in this scroll I’d have killed you both outright”. 

Naruto very much doubted that Kitetsu was capable of doing any such thing, but nonetheless was shaken by the apparent knowledge the man had on the Leaf’s database of shinobi. What could it possibly mean? Was there a mole in the leaf? Could there be? Naruto dismissed the thought with an internal shake of the head. It wouldn’t do to start doubting his comrades now. The will of fire burned equally brightly in every single fellow leaf shinobi, he was sure of it. 

All the same, he would be sure to report the information breach to Shikamaru whenever their next intel drop occurred. He looked back up at Kitetsu, who seemed to have noticed the gears in his head turning.

“Surprised that I know so much about your village? Come now, you don’t really believe these two and I are the only shinobi in the world unhappy with what it’s become after the war?”. He gave a short, sharp laugh. 

“We are everywhere. And soon, under Lord Kazuma, we will change everything. None can stand against him, not with his incredible skill and jutsu. The legendary Sannin, Orochimaru himself, offered to ally with Lord Kazuma, but of course, he turned him down. We have no need for greedy, unpredictable snakes like him, ever ready to backstab anyone at anytime. Lord Kazuma needs shinobi who truly want to change the world, who believe in the cause we fight for”. 

Naruto had involuntarily frozen upon hearing that name, but reminded himself to act normal immediately. Orochimaru? Ally with anyone? That man never did anything for anyone other than himself. Which worried Naruto, because if this Kazuma really were powerful, he could imagine Orochimaru trying to steal the man’s jutsu. 

Anyhow, there was no reason to even take such a preposterous claim seriously. Sakura finished healing the cloud shinobi as he came around, groaning as he sat up, and she jumped back up to where Naruto was.

Kitetsu straightened up. 

“You two will be coming with us, then. Since you’re both still probably new to the concept of being rogue ninja you can follow our lead. I will need all your weapons and ninja tools though, just until we reach our base of operations, you understand? There, once we make sure you can be trusted, you can have them back”. 

Sakura quietly removed her pack and kunai pouch, as Naruto did the same.

Kitetsu grinned. “Excellent. Either you want to join badly enough to place your lives in my hands, or you’re so confident in your abilities that you don’t think you’d even need ninja tools to take me down. Perhaps you could defeat me if you worked together and got lucky, but let me assure you, Lord Kazuma is a different matter entirely. There wouldn’t be a safe place left to hide in this world if you angered him”. 

He received both their ninja gear and put them away in his own pack. His grin remained firmly in place as he added in an undertone, “Remember, we’re everywhere”. 

The two cloud shinobi straightened up. The blond haired one introduced himself as Harui and the orange haired one, still slightly bleary, was called Yoroi. “No hard feelings about nearly killing you two, eh shrimps?”, Harui joked as they fell into a formation with Kitetsu in the lead and the cloud duo bringing up the rear. 

“That’s not how I remember it happening”, commented Naruto as they took off into the woods. 

“So where are we going now?”, asked Sakura. Kitetsu’s voice carried back to them as they jumped from branch to branch. 

“Lord Kazuma has eyes and ears everywhere. He knows all about the discontent brewing in each and every hidden village. Which was why he sent me to collect them all and bring them to us safely. If the villages knew their shinobi were defecting, they’d rather kill them than let them join an opposing force. I managed to get a few squads of like minded shinobi safely out of the cloud a few days ago, and we weren’t expecting any defectors from the hidden leaf, but more hands is certainly a welcome surprise. Of course, if you’re spies working for the other side, you’ll have a quick death once we reach the base”. 

They couldn’t see his face but Naruto got the sense that Kitetsu was smiling that quiet, soulless smile.

“We’re on our way now to the hidden mist to collect another group of recruits. If everything goes well we’ll reach the base in a few days”. 

Naruto and Sakura quietly internalised this information as they moved. The scope of it boggled the mind. They were both quickly realising that the mission was a lot larger than Shikamaru had made it out to be. This wasn’t just a few rogue squads anymore. This was an organisation with a network in multiple villages, seemingly with enough shinobi to merit a base of operations, and a leader who was supposedly powerful enough to merit Orochimaru’s interest. 

Of course, a lot what he had heard just now was just unverifiable verbal intel, but if he stuck around Kitetsu long enough, he had a feeling he would find out the truth soon one way or the other. Kitetsu himself also intrigued him. Naruto wanted to ask if there were others from this organisation leading each group of rogue shinobi, or whether it was just Kitetsu, but he realised that asking for too much information would probably only make him more suspicious in their eyes. The best thing to do for now would probably be to shut up and keep moving. 

As the day continued to wear on however, Sakura broke the silence. “There’s something I don’t understand”, she said, just loud enough for Yoroi and Harui to hear, but not loud enough to reach Kitetsu’s ears. 

“If your whole issue is having to work with the other villages and forgiving and forgetting your differences, which is why you two went rogue, how come you’re so willing to do the exact same thing under Kazuma’s banner?”. 

The two cloud shinobi chewed on those words for a few mintues, the rushing wind whipping away some of his voice when Yoroi answered. “It ain’t those guys who decided to forgive and forget and play friends though, is it? It’s the kage. All of them, brainwashed by that nine tailed demon, enough to just throw all those sacrifices away and act like they didn’t happen”. 

Harui added, “From what we’ve heard Kazuma has real power. Power enough to challenge even the kage. And he’s promised that power to us. I’ve seen it in action myself”. He went silent for a few seconds as he regarded Kitetsu with something like fear in his eyes. “I’ve seen him wield it, Kazuma’s power. It’s terrifying. And Kitetsu says we can wield that power too”.

Silence resumed again for a short while, before Yoroi added as an afterthought, “Even if it’s all lies, even if Kazuma isn’t all he’s cracked up to be, I ain’t willing to live in a world like this. Even if it’s just a ragtag bunch of shinobi like us, we’ll take the fight to the kage”.

Naruto absorbed his words quietly. 

“But it’s not lies. Kitetsu showed us that”, he added. 

The moon glinted in the darkening sky when Kitetsu called them to a halt. “We’re nearing mist territory. We’ve probably been spotted by now, but that’s alright. We’re counting on that. That’s the signal for the mist shinobi that want to join us to come on out”.

Even someone as relatively reckless as Naruto could see the foolishness in this. “Isn’t that taking things a bit too easy? What if we’re outnumbered? What if they catch us off guard?”. 

Kitetsu turned to Naruto and smiled that same eerie grin, 

“There isn’t a being in the hidden mist that can beat me, because lord Kazuma’s power flows through me”. 

Naruto inhaled reflexively as a strange fervour shone in his eyes.  
“It’s time for this wretched world to face the wrath of the shinobi it has forgotten, the wrath of those of us who were left to scurry while the gods rained down hell during that war, the wrath of those who will not cower in fear against those monsters. We’ll take our fate into our own hands, and become the masters of this world ourselves”. 

The light left his eyes as he straightened up.  
“Now set up a camp. I’ll keep a watch. Thanks to the power I’ve been gifted I don’t need to sleep. We’ll await the arrival of the mist ninja and leave by morning. If any trouble arises, I’ll handle it”. He looked at Naruto and Sakura. “And you two, I’d like to talk to you about why you defected and why you want to join us. Just being cautious, I’m sure you understand”.

They both nodded at him. “But first, I gotta go take a whizz. Be back in a sec!”, said Naruto, walking off into a bush. 

Subtly reaching down, he unhooked one of the vials of chakra-infused ink that Sai had whipped up for them before they had left. Naruto trickled the ink down onto the flat surface of a rock, focusing on the words he wanted to convey while doing so. The ink responded to Naruto’s chakra, forming the letters of his report. Quickly scanning the words, Naruto made a hand sign and the ink stopped reacting to his manipulation, turning into a small black, inky sparrow and fluttering away quietly.

It was vital Kakashi and Shikamaru discover the true scale of this operation, or at least, that they were informed of the possibilty.

Finishing up, Naruto returned to see Kitetsu grilling Sakura on her motivations and reasons for going rogue. Yoroi and Harui were already asleep, the two having seemingly already finished eating. Naruto wondered how they could trust Kitetsu with their lives so easily. And what was that power of his, or more accurately, of Kazuma’s, that they had been talking about earlier? 

Kitetsu seemed to have finished conversing with Sakura and beckoned to Naruto to come towards him. He met Sakura’s eyes as he walked past her, looking for some sort of indication as to what to expect. She seemed unperturbed, so Naruto judged that Kitestsu had probably not been able to detect any cracks in their story. 

Naruto sat down from across Kitetsu, who remained on his feet. A strong wind rustled through the trees, Kitetsu’s red vest dyed a pale maroon by the moonlight. 

“Mizuki. That was your name, wasn’t it?”. 

Naruto nodded. 

“Aren’t you the interesting one..” Kitetsu said in a low tone. “You and your friend intrigued me, so I looked into you. And what I was told was intriguing. A rogue academy instructor who was first defeated by none other than the Nine tailed demon itself, who then broke out of prison subsequently, tried and failed to ally with Orochimaru, and was beaten once more by the same fox”.  
Naruto was already tensed from having to pretend to let down his guard around this strange shinobi, but he flinched almost visibly upon hearing his cover dismantled with such accuracy.

Let alone what he knew, how on earth could he possibly have learned it in the span of the hours in which they had all been travelling together. Kitetsu had been in Naruto’s field of vision the whole time and he hadn’t once seen him talk to anyone else or enquire about him to anyone. Just what was going on? 

Kitetsu continued, “I wasn’t inclined to believe the two of you at first, but you showed up here, and then hours later the leaf reported that a shinobi by the name of Mizuki had vanished from the confinement he had been in. You broke out of prison, aided by a member of the ANBU, that Kaguya, probably heard of the cloud shinobi going rogue from her, and set off to find them. That’s what she told me anyway, and our sources in leaf back up your story”. 

He smiled. “Such initiative is admirable, though I’m not going to pretend that you aren’t doing this for purely selfish reasons. But no matter the cause, you share the same goal as Lord Kazuma, and your strength will be appreciated in the fight against the kage, and the nine tails that was responsible for your downfall. You may have only joined us because you’re desperate and on the run from your village, with nowhere else to go, but Lord Kazuma will give you the power that the gods wielded during the war”. 

None of it made sense. Naruto couldn’t figure it out. How could he know all of this? How could Kitetsu have learned it so quickly? And what did he mean by ‘the leaf reported Mizuki missing’? Sure it was convenient, and solidified their cover, but it was still a bolt from the blue. 

The level of information this man seemingly had access to was terrifying. Where was he getting it all from, and more importantly, how?

One thing was for sure. The village had drastically underestimated the difficulty of this mission. He hoped that the report he had sent would sufficiently convey the message. Of course, Sakura was also going to send a report, so the message would probably still get across even if he screwed it up somehow. 

Kitetsu tensed and raised his head. “That’s far enough. Step into the light”. 

Naruto turned around. He had heard them too, footsteps blundering through the trees, the sound of inexperienced feet trying to be quiet. 

Two figures jumped out of the forest, landing in front of them. Yoroi stirred a little in his sleep as one of the figures stepped forward. It was an old man, wearing a headband that bore the symbol of the mist. The symbol itself had been scratched out, marking him as a rogue ninja. “Is it true?”, he asked in a warbling voice.

Kitetsu examined him coldly. “You’re Haru and Moto then? The mist ninja who wanted to join Lord Kazuma? State the password we established in the letter earlier”. 

The old man continued as if he had not heard. “Is it true what you said? Lord Kazuma can turn back time?”. 

Kitetsu’s eyes flared as he made a handsign. “The password, man!”. 

The old man’s companion rushed forward, and Naruto noticed with surprise that he was just a kid. 

“It’s ‘Darkness thrives in the void, but always yields to purifying light’! Don’t hurt him!”. 

Kitetsu’s snarl melted away as he relaxed. The old man on the other hand, was anything but.

He was trembling, and his eyes reflected the moonlight, full of tears unshed. “Can he really bring him back? Can he really change the past? Please, you must tell me!”.

Kitetsu replied derisively, “Did I not assure you of that in the letter? Lord Kazuma has the ultimate power. He has discovered the way to rewrite time itself!”.

Naruto saw Sakura freeze as he involuntarily did the same. Turn back time..? Then … Neji, and the Pervy Sage, and… He shook his head firmly. No. The past was past and they had died to give him the world they had shaped with their lives. There was no way. No one could turn back time. It was impossible. He had heard a lot of unbelievable things about this Kazuma so far, but Naruto decided he wouldn’t believe a single one of them until he had seen it with his own eyes.

The old man on the other hand had no such compunction. He fell to his knees, sobbing as his young companion hugged him. Naruto could see that the boy wore mist fatigues too. What was he, a rogue genin?

Sakura ran over and, along with Naruto, helped the old man to his feet, as he wiped away his tears.

The old man spoke, his voice firmer now. “I’m sorry, I haven’t been able to focus on anything since I knew that my Ryu could be brought back from the dead, since I came across your missive about Lord Kazuma. I’ll do anything, anything at all for Lord Kazuma, only please, please have him bring my son back to life”.

These were the deadly rogue shinobi that had Shikamaru so worried? Naruto gritted his teeth. He was sickened. Preying on the desperate and the hurt with lies and promises of power in order to get them to join him. This Kazuma was despicable. It reminded him of how Orochimaru used to act before the war. Naruto saw a similar rage and disgust on Sakura’s face. He knew why. They were both reminded of Sasuke, and how he’d been manipulated in a similar way. 

“He can do it, right? He can really bring him back, right?”, the boy piped up.

Naruto kneeled down to his height. “You can’t change the past, kid. I know it hurts, and I know you’d do anything… go anywhere, if it would bring them back. I know you can’t stop thinking about how things would have been if they’d gone differently, of what you could’ve done, or should’ve done, to prevent it. But you can’t. They’re gone”, he said. “And that pain becomes a part of who we are. Lord Kazuma has power, sure, but no one has that much power”. 

The old man darted at him, holding him by the collar. “You’re lying! Lord Kazuma can turn back time!”. His eyes grew wet once more. “He has to..”.

Kitetsu stood up. “That’s enough. Mizuki, I understand you don’t believe me, but I’m not lying. Luckily enough, an excellent opportunity to demonstrate Lord Kazuma’s power has just arrived. While you were all getting to know each other, we’ve been surrounded”. 

Naruto snapped to alert, reaching for a kunai before belatedly realising he didn’t have any.

The two mist shinobi went on guard too, though the old man was still trembling.

“Give us back our ninja tools!”, said Sakura sharply. “We need them if we need to fight!”.

Naruto could see that Kitetsu was right. There were squads of shinobi all around them, hiding in the trees. Not that he was worried, but having to restrict his fighting style did annoy him. 

Kitetsu however seemed supremely at ease. “You won’t BE fighting”, he said with a grin. He turned to look at the old man. “You two were sloppy. You were followed and now we’ve been ambushed by the mist. Ordinarily this would be a desperate last stand, but those days are long over”. He turned back to face the trees. “We won’t even need to wake those two nitwits from the cloud”. He put his hands together.

“It’s time for you all”, he said, his chakra rising off him in pulsing waves, “To see a taste of the power Lord Kazuma can give you”.

A shinobi wearing the mask of the mist’s Anbu unit jumped down into the open. “Do not try anything stupid. You are surrounded and outnumbered. Give up now and you might be allowed to live”. 

Kitetsu’s eyes filled with that fire again as he rapidly made hand signs, his chakra growing more and more intense.

The mist anbu seemed unnerved by the sheer volume of his chakra, as was everyone else in the clearing. Naruto hadn’t seen that much chakra used at once since the war. 

Stepping backwards, the Anbu shinobi yelled, “A-Attack!”. 

Time slowed down as Naruto watched a hail of kunai fly from the trees around them. A pointed wall of death that would pierce unforgivingly. Naruto readied his chakra. “Well buddy, it looks like there’s nothing for it. I’m going to have to use your chakra”. 

Kurama sighed. “You plan on saving those two from the mist too, don’t you?”, he replied.

“Yup!”, said Naruto, orange flame slowly beginning to emerge from his abdomen.

“You’re too soft. They chose to betray their village”.

“No, they were tricked and manipulated. They’re not bad people”. 

As the wall of kunai closed in, Naruto grinned. “Here we go”.

And then the ground exploded. 

Naruto was thrown off his feet roughly, and though he could have easily righted himself in the air either with a shadow clone or a chakra-cloak arm, he chose to do nothing and fell back instead. This was because he noticed that the rogue mist ninja duo had also been similarly thrown back, and were safe. 

The kunai had been stopped, and looking upwards Naruto beheld a sight that was so visceral that he was suddenly taken back to the day he had stood on that field against Madara Uchiha and the second Tsuchikage, flanked by Gaara and The current tsuchikage. He recalled Madara’s hands closing in the same hand sign that Kitetsu had made, and recalled him uttering the same words:

“Deep Forest Emergence”

Trees had erupted from the ground. Massive, writhing, enormous wooden things. Crushing all in their path, growing outwards with the fury of the First Hokage’s power. Naruto looked around their little clearing. It was complete annihilation. Except for where they stood, the rest of the forest had been destroyed by.. another forest. Massive trees coiled all around them, forming a solid wall that had blocked all the kunai. Groans echoed from the woods as Naruto looked past the wall, and with dawning horror, realised what had happened. 

Mist Anbu lay crushed under the girth of the enormous trees, their groans filling the night with a macabre air. Others, unlucky ones, were impaled on those bloodthirsty branches, and Naruto closed his eyes as a vision of Neji falling to the ground with wooden spikes sticking out of him came to his mind unbidden. 

It was a massacre. They had been completely wiped out.


	4. Things are coming to a head, Kazuma's hideout revealed!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for the slow update. Shit's been hectic between classes and I had exams all week but here it is at long last.

There was a ringing echo growing louder and louder. Words echoing in his mind, “Because.. because you called me a genius”. He could still see the waves of deadly wooden shrapnel raining down from the ten tails, hear Madara’s derisive voice, feel Neji’s weight in his arms growing colder and colder.

Naruto snapped back to the present, once again in the presence of the overwhelming power and destruction that the wood style was capable of. He heard a surprised yelp behind him and looked back to see that Harui had woken up and beheld the carnage. Naruto watched as he shook his partner awake, and the two stared at the scene, aghast. 

“You… you murdered them all”, said Sakura in a low tone.

Naruto detected the surprise in her voice turning to fury and turned to see her advancing on Kitetsu, his back still turned to them. 

Naruto put a hand on her shoulder as she passed him, and she stopped moving. They stood there for a few seconds, until Sakura had regained her composure and remembered the situation. 

“Do you see?”, Kitetsu crowed. “Do you see the might Lord Kazuma wields?! Is this not the power of the gods? Isn’t it?”. He turned to the mist duo, who seemed to still be processing the events of the last few minutes. “Well?”, Kitetsu repeated, advancing on the duo, who both stepped away from him, their faces graven with terror. 

“Do you still doubt him? Do you now see the truth? Mizuki?”, he said, turning to Naruto, and marked with approval that the expression of surprise on Naruto’s face did not change into one of terror, but rather one of grim determination. “Ha!”, he laughed, clapping Naruto on the back. “You face divine fury and bare your fangs, bold as ever. I like you! Soon you too will possess this kind of power, and then the world will be forced to face what it tried to brush under the carpet”.

Naruto meanwhile was coming to several realisations very quickly. Forget about mission rankings and rewards, this was a global crisis on the scale of the war itself. He had witnessed with his own eyes as an impossibility had taken place before him, one he had resolved not to believe mere moments earlier. Which meant.. Kitetsu hadn’t been bluffing after all. 

This Kazuma possessed the ability to gift his soldiers with the wood style. And not on the reduced scale that he recalled Captain Yamato being able to use, no. This was the power of the first hokage unleashed. “Power of the gods” indeed, ordinary shinobi stood no chance at all. And if Kitetsu had been completely truthful about the whole “great power” thing, then what he had said about going back in time…. This was the first realisation that struck Naruto, that this organisation and this person were absolutely every bit as terrifyingly powerful as they had been made out to be. 

There was no more room for speculation. He had just witnessed a small army be decimated in seconds. This was real, and it was happening.

The second realisation that came to him was a colder one. A grim realisation. The realisation that, if things were this dire, and these people already so widespread and so powerful…. Naruto might not have the luxury of waiting for the hidden leaf to act. He would have to fix this himself, on the ground. If he were to go around taking down every single one of Kazuma’s subordinates that wielded this power it would take far too long and too many would die. No. He needed to be quick and decisive.

He needed to take down Kazuma himself. It was the only way to bring this burgeoning threat to their hard won peace to an end.

Naruto heard Sakura whispering in his ear. “We’re going to have to do this ourselves, aren’t we?”. 

“Looks like it”, he replied, seeing his own determination reflected in her eyes.

“Well that’s alright”, she said firmly. “We’ve taken down bigger threats than this guy. And besides, I have a plan”. 

Naruto silently thanked Shikamaru for having the foresight to send some sort of strategist along with him, let alone one as reliable as Sakura. 

“No one would just hand out power like this without some sort of safeguard”, she continued. “Even Orochimaru’s curse mark came along with a large amount of his own chakra. If Kazuma is the one giving them this power, he must have some way to neutralise it too. All we need to do is find him, and then beat the answer out of him”.

Naruto felt a petty satisfaction that the plan she had come up with was pretty much the same plan he had come up with. See? He could be the ‘brains of the operation’ too! Of course, he hadn’t gotten far ahead enough to consider how the rest of Kazuma’s superpowered army would be taken care of, but that was irrelevent, it was the same plan. 

“Now”, said Kitetsu, and everyone but Naruto and Sakura flinched at his voice. “Since our friends from the mist have joined us, there’s no need to dally any longer. Pack up, we’re going home, to the land of lightning”. He turned away from them, gazing at the horizon.

.

Shikamaru was awoken by a sharp tapping noise. He cursed quietly when he realised that he had dozed off on the job. Perhaps it would be better for him to take a short smoke break and get back to the paperwork he was working on in a few minutes. He couldn’t afford to drift off now. It would be unfair to Naruto if his advisor weren’t working at least as hard as he was.

The sharp tapping interrupted his train of thought once more. Shikamaru turned around to see two birds seated on the window, the larger of the two tapping against the glass with its beak. Putting away the cigarette he had been taking out, he rushed over to the window. A mission update? Already? And moreover, two of them? So urgent that they woke him up? 

Squinting at the bright light of the full moon, he opened the window, telling from the silhouettes outlined against it that the larger bird was a hawk, and the smaller a sparrow. The birds hopped inside the room, and Shikamaru belatedly realised that the sparrow was in fact, just a silhouette. It was a construct made of Sai’s ink jutsu. 

He reached for, and unrolled a blank scroll he had on his person for this exact occasion, and placed it on the floor as the hawk tapped him with its beak once more. “I know, I know”, he said irritably. “I’ll get to you in a second”. 

The ink sparrow hopped over to the paper and splattered across its surface, forming words and letters with its substance. The message dried as it became clear, and Shikamaru picked up the scroll, absorbing its words in the moonlit room. His expression darkened, and grew from one of surprise, to one of disbelief, to one of fear. 

“Oh man oh man oh man, you’ve got to be kidding me”, he muttered under his breath, as he processed Naruto’s words.

He stood up swiftly. “What a drag, I thought we were done with this sort of madness. Kakashi’s gotta hear about this immediately”. 

He turned towards the door, and in a flurry of wings the hawk was blocking his path. It gazed at him in the laser sharp way that only a bird of prey can, and Shikamaru said defensively, “Alright, alright. Give me your message”.

The hawk held out its leg and Shikamaru unrolled a scroll tied around it, opening it to see words written in a familiar cipher. 

“This… This is from Sasuke!”. He sat down once more, holding Sasuke’s message in his hands, as his eyes flew from word to word furiously. His mouth went agape as he read the scroll. “So that’s who Kazuma is…. And that’s how he gained so much power… I never would’ve guessed…. I see….”. 

Rolling it back up once he had read its contents in their entirety, he pulled out another blank scroll, thought for a few seconds, and began to write a reply to Sasuke before thinking better of it. 

“No, I should run my strategy by Kakashi first”.

He turned to the hawk and nodded, and the bird, looking somewhat annoyed at having to wait so long (So far as beady black eyes and a beak turned downwards in a permanent scowl can look annoyed), flew out of the window it entered through.

Shikamaru sighed in relief, his mind that had been so troubled upon reading Naruto’s report, put enormously at ease by reading Sasuke’s. So Sasuke was on Kazuma’s tail as well. It relieved him to no end that the most capable shinobi of the leaf were all working on the this world-threatening issue that had remained hidden for so long. Maybe they’d even run into each other. He had a chuckle at that, a little team seven reunion. 

He walked out of the room and up the corridor that led to the Hokage’s, his mind running through scenarios, moving Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura around like Shogi pieces on a board. Best case scenario, they’d take him down with a pincer movement, Naruto and Sakura attacking from within and Sasuke from without. It was lucky they had moles on the inside, assuming they had avoided detection.

The worst case scenario on the other hand, would be…. He paused. No, that was so improbable it was pretty much impossible. Then he remembered who he was dealing with. 

His footsteps echoed on the wood as he set off for Kakashi’s office at a run. He had to communicate Sasuke’s information to Naruto and Sakura immediately.

.

The scenery flew by in a blur, the sky gradually lightening as they stepped nimbly from branch to branch. No one in the party had gotten much sleep, but Naruto was feeling the effects especially badly. His eyes kept involuntarily closing as he kept zoning out and in and out and in of what his body was doing. 

He was dimly aware of Sakura on his left, and the mist duo in front of him. The younger boy was saying something to Sakura but Naruto could only vaguely make out the words. Sakura replied in a reassuring tone, and Naruto definitely caught the name “Kazuma” in there at least once. He perked up and tried to identify what had been said, focusing intensely on listening, and rammed headfirst into a tree.

The enormous rustle alerted Kitetsu and the mist duo, who came to a halt as Naruto crashed down through the foliage onto the forest floor. 

Harui burst into laughter as his partner stared in disbelief. 

Sakura’s expression was a mixture of concern, disappointment, and contempt as she jumped down to where Naruto had fallen. 

The younger of the mist duo chuckled, but grew quiet at his elder giving him a cautionary glare.

Naruto’s world meanwhile, was revolving rather rapidly. Trees seemed to be moving around him even though he wasn’t moving at all. He groaned as he rubbed his head where it had bonked into the tree. This was what came of not sleeping properly for a week. 

“NARUTO!”, called an angry voice in his head. He jerked upright as Kurama yelled. “You idiot! You dropped the transformation jutsu!”. Naruto whirled around, looking at himself. Had he ruined the whole mission with another slip up? His pounding heart slowed down as he realised he still wore the likeness of Mizuki. 

A sigh escaped his mouth as Sakura landed next to him and Kurama spoke once more. “If I hadn’t been preparing for exactly this and been careful to maintain the jutsu for you, you’d be done right now. Get your act together, Naruto. You’re better than this”. 

Sakura raised her hand and Naruto involuntarily flinched, but she only examined his head where it had swollen from the impact. “Are you alright?”, she asked lightly.

“Yeah”, he replied sheepishly. “I’ll be fine”. 

“You’ll have to sleep at some point you know?”, she said as Harui’s laughter echoed from the trees. 

“That’s enough”, rang Kitetsu’s low, but firm voice. “Mizuki, what’s the matter with you?”, he continued from where he stood.

“Oh uh… I’ve just haven’t been sleeping much lately, heh heh”, Naruto replied with a hand behind his head. His eyes narrowed as Sakura added, “It’s a consequence of how we broke him out of prison. He may be a bit clumsy right now, but I can vouch for his combat effectiveness”. 

Kitetsu sighed and nodded. “No matter, I’ve already seen you two fight”.

“Umm, mister Kitetsu sir, shouldn’t we be speaking a bit less loudly? We are still in mist territory after all”, said the young mist ninja hesitantly, eyeing Harui who was still guffawing. 

Kitetsu smiled at him unnervingly. “It matters not, child. They can do nothing against us, after all. Any and all pursuers will be annihilated completely”.

The boy swallowed and nodded. Shaking his head, Naruto jumped back up to his old position as Sakura joined him.

Kitetsu rummaged in his pack for a second before tossing Naruto a food pill. “Eat that, it’ll keep you awake till we get where we’re headed”. Naruto caught it and nodded. 

As everyone resumed moving, Naruto stealthily pocketed it. Perhaps Shikamaru could learn something about their enemy from its composition. He resolved to send it to the Leaf whenever he could. 

The group continued their unceasing pace as the sun rose slowly and eventually reached its zenith in the sky. The forest eventually petered out as they entered rocky fields with spires and protrusions jutting from the ground regularly. They stopped shortly to eat something at noon before resuming their march, everyone gradually tiring in the burning heat.

The day crawled on at a pace as slow as they were fast, inching forwards hour by hour. Both Naruto and Sakura made note of the direction they were moving in, the areas they had crossed, and how much distance they’d covered. Or at least, attempted to with varying results.

As the cool of the evening began to set in, Sakura gave Naruto a meaningful glare all of a sudden. Naruto was mystified for a few seconds before detecting it. They were being followed. 

From what he could tell, the group following them was somewhat large, though smaller than the one they’d faced in the mist. He estimated around ten to fifteen of them, but couldn’t be certain without using some sort of sensory technique, like sage mode or the nine tails cloak. 

He wondered if Kitetsu had detected them too. If he had, he gave no sign, moving as tirelessly and unrelentingly forward as he had from the beginning. He was pretty certain that the cloud duo hadn’t caught on yet, judging from their lack of reaction, though he couldn’t be sure about the mist duo.

He looked at Sakura questioningly, and she shrugged at his silently conveyed “What should we do?”. 

Naruto thought for a few minutes, and called out softly to Kitetsu as they moved. “We’re being followed. Don’t react”. 

Both Yoroi and Harui came to an abrupt halt as the others bounded away naturally, before stopping upon realising that some of their party had been left behind.

Kitetsu sighed audibly. 

“You know, I’m starting to second guess the wisdom in bringing you two numbskulls along”, he said to the cloud ninja, as Yoroi exclaimed at the same time in disbelief and fear, “We’re being followed?!”. 

Sakura sighed with the resignation of one who has spent their entire life dealing with constant dumbassery, and said, “Well, now they definitely know that we know”.

Kitetsu put his hand to his chin ponderously as the two mist ninja began whispering amongst themselves.

“What’re you two going on about?”, asked Naruto, causing them to stop.

“It’s the Hidden Mist, it has to be”, said the old man. “They aren’t going to let the massacre of their men go unavenged. We’re all in so much trouble...”.

Kitetsu turned around, having finished thinking. “There’s no need to engage with them here. There’s no sense in risking your lives after I went to all this trouble to get you. We’ll continue heading towards the base and when we’re close enough that you can find it yourselves, I’ll stay behind and wipe out those fools”.

Still uneasy, Naruto and the others nodded, Yoroi and Harui collecting themselves, and the squad took off once more, leaping away into the setting sun.  
The cloud ninja’s behavior confused Naruto. When they had met he recalled them acting cocky and overconfident. They had turned into scared, jumpy people overnight. As the rocky terrain began to give way to scarred and ridged ground, Naruto realised that Kitetsu’s awesome display of power the last night might have had something to do with it. 

.

Sasuke Uchiha was having a bad day. Not that he ever had a good day. His days were usually as flavourless as the false personality he wore around basically anyone that wasn't a childhood friend. Boring days, slow days, all those were normal, but a bad day? That was rare. It had barely been a week since he had uncovered Kazuma’s conspiracy and he had already figured out pretty much every single aspect of it himself.

Having long since discovered and infiltrated Kazuma’s base of operations, as well as having calculated and come up with a strategy against Kazuma’s ability to give his soldiers godlike power,Sasuke was closer than he had ever been to shutting down the entire operation. The only thing missing was the linchpin of his whole plan.

The ground around Sasuke steamed and bubbled from the heat of deflected explosions as their cause frantically prepared some more. Sasuke had had an unenjoyable experience fighting the user of this style years ago. Having to deal with it again was just unpleasant. His opponent was scrambling, desperately reaching into his bag and devouring some sort of white stuff.

“I’ll ask you one last time”, he yelled at the panting shinobi standing opposite him. “Where is Kazuma?”. 

The shinobi gritted his teeth. “I’ll die before I talk!”, he yelled, doubling his chewing speed and beginning to weave hand signs at the same time. 

“No”, said Sasuke as he disappeared from where he had been standing and appeared right next to the terrified shinobi in a blur of black. “You’ll die when I’m done with you. No sooner”. 

As he reached out to grab the man, the ninja finished weaving his hand signs and smiled maniacally, his mouth still dripping. “Ninja Art, C-0 Detonation!”, he yelled frantically, as his entire body began to grow transparent. 

Sasuke’s eyes widened as understanding hit him, and then there was nothing but light, and sound.

A massive explosion lit up the sky, a crowning tower of Yellow and White. Blazing lances of red flame arced out of the conflagration, arcing haphazardly and burning everything they landed on. Roiling plumes of light and heat burst out of the asymmetrical center, consuming everything in its path. The very ground itself shook with the force of the blast, a shivering of the earth that spread with the heatwave.

This explosion was nowhere near as elegant or focused as the technique it was attempting to copy. If the jutsu’s creator could see it used in such a sloppy manner, he would have almost certainly strangled the man to death himself, muttering about maintaining the purity of ‘true art’, whatever that is. He would have however, been consoled by the fact that, in accordance with his original objective, the jutsu was used in an attempt to kill Sasuke Uchiha.

.

The ground shook as a flight of birds noisily flew up in the distance. Naruto windmilled his arms as the land beneath his feet shifted, but regained his balance. Everyone around him found themselves slipping, and Naruto caught the old man as he lost his balance, while Sakura helped the young boy stay on his feet. 

A bright flare of light shone from the horizon, and Naruto shaded his eyes as he turned around, trying to get a better look at it. 

“What in the hell?!”, exclaimed Harui once he had stopped wobbling around. “That looked as powerful as one of those blasted tailed beast bombs!”, he continued.

Naruto was thinking the exact same thing. The size and power of the blast… It was reminiscent of a tailed beast ball. But that was impossible… right?

“We should go over there and investigate”, said Sakura, squinting at the rising column of heat. 

“No”, said Kitetsu with an air of finality. “We aren’t here to go around poking our noses into every little mystery we come across. Remember why we’re all here. We’re going straight back to base and that’s final”. 

Sakura looked like she wanted to argue, but said nothing. 

Naruto meanwhile ingrained all he could about the blast in his memory. Shikamaru definitely needed to hear about this. 

The rest of the group dusted themselves off and resumed formation, now with the apprehension at the strange explosion adding to the fear of their pursuers weighing on their minds. It was hard to put such a menacing and mysterious occurrence behind them, but put it behind them they did, as they turned around as one and leapt away into the distance.

.

Every single member of the elite unit of Mist ninja pursuing Kitetsu’s group froze as one when the ground shook beneath their feet. Still and silent as a bank of fog, they remained frozen as the sky lit up and the shockwave passed them by. Like shadows, they moved with the land, their noiseless feet adjusting to the unstable ground as the tremors began to die down.

Like a well oiled machine, they rapidly communicated with quiet, precise hand signals, looking to their leader for direction. After a few seconds of silent discussion, two mist ninja split off from the group, melting into the landscape as the main group set off once more on Kitetsu’s trail. The leader of the unit reminded himself not to allow the rage and fury he had felt upon discovering the corpses of his dead comrades to cloud his judgement. 

Gripping the twin swords on his back, he calmly gestured for his squad to slow their pace a little and keep behind their quarry.

.

As far as it was possible for the menacing scowl of a Susanoo’ to look depressed, Sasuke’s susanoo did. As the smoke began to clear and the sky began to become visible again, the haze lifted to reveal the rippling purple emanations of Sasuke’s Susanoo’ encasing his body. It was nowhere near as big as it could be, shrunk down so as not to be too conspicuous, but even its terrifying purple visage seemed like it needed cheering up.

Sasuke sat down, the giant purple warrior mirroring his movements, and put his knees to his chest. This had been the fifth of Kazuma’s soldiers today to manage to kill themselves before he could get to them. He was so close to ending Kazuma’s threat for good. So close to giving the Hidden villages the ok to swoop in and end the menace once and for all. 

Granted, he had only informed Shikamaru of his collected intel and activities the previous day, but given the pace and amount of infiltration he’d been doing, he’d barely had any time to collate and report what he’d found. Not bad for just a week’s worth of work, he thought to himself, before gritting his teeth again. 

Kazuma had vanished to who knew where, and his men knew something about it, that much was for certain. Sasuke had refrained from engaging in open battle with them so far, so as to maintain secrecy, but now that he had all the information he needed, there was no need for that anymore. Or so he had thought.  
No one in his base of operations seemed to know where Kazuma had gone, even under genjutsu. Only a select group of superpowered soldiers that kazuma had sent to the hidden villages to bring new recruits to their base seemed to know something more, but so far all had successfully managed to keep that information from Sasuke even at the cost of their lives. 

There was only one such of Kazuma’s superpowered escorts left alive at this point. Sasuke pulled out the notes he’d made on their names and assignments and went through the list, his finger stopping at the final word on the list. “Kitetsu..”, he said softly to himself. Scanning through the man’s planned route, Sasuke made some mental calculations, taking into account when he had left and how quickly he’d most likely be moving. If his calculations were right, Kitetsu would be.. “Not too far from here”. It seemed he’d finally caught a lucky break.

A twig cracked and Sasuke whirled his head around as a small involuntary yelp of alarm sounded near the Susanoo’s knees. 

The two mist ninja who had appeared from the woods to behold the mighty Susanoo sitting sadly with its knees pulled to its chest, smiled weakly as they put their hands up placatingly. This was not something they should have seen, they were sure of that. 

Sasuke sighed in embarrassment and dispelled the Susanoo. As he landed nimbly, he nodded at the mist shinobi, and blinked out of existence.

“W...was that..”, stuttered one. “S..S..Sssasuke Uchiha?”, completed the other as they both locked eyes. They both stared at each other for a few seconds before one burst into weak laughter. 

“Man… I was terrified”. The other one sat down as he caught his breath. “Tell me about it…. I think I peed myself a little”.

His partner blanched. “Come on, let’s get back to the group”. He got up and shook his head to clear it. “Was it just me though, or did that huge purple jutsu thing look kinda..sad?”. “Yeah”, said the other. “Like a kid that spilled their milk”. 

.

As night began to fall, Naruto could almost swear that the place was starting to look familiar. The ground was covered in scorch marks and craters, scars and wounds peppering the land. They’d been travelling all day at a punishing pace, jumping from branch to crag to rock with chakra enhanced speed, covering days’ worth of travel in hours. 

Naruto didn’t understand Kitetsu’s rush, and to be completely honest he’d spent around half the journey in a haze of sleepy daydreams, so he’d lost track of where they’d been going and where they were headed. Not that he hadn't tried before eventually giving up. He trusted Sakura to keep track of stuff like that, and going by an eerily similar train of thought, Sakura had meticulously kept track of direction, not trusting Naruto to do so. 

As Kitetsu came to a halt, the rest of the group followed suit, the old man putting his hands on his knees and panting heavily. Naruto crashed headlong into Harui, and the two were a whirl of limbs before they untangled themselves. 

“Back here?”, asked Yoroi incredulously as his partner muttered obscenities about Naruto’s lack of physical coordination . 

“If your base was so close to the cloud this whole time why didn’t’cha come fetch us last?”, he continued. 

Kitetsu snarled. “We have evidence that the hidden villages are moving against us. It was imperative that we got you all out of your villages without sparing any time. Besides, it wasn’t much more than a mild inconvenience to you, wasn’t it? You got to trek all over the land and witness Lord Kazuma’s power firsthand”. 

Yoroi paled at the memory of that and stopped asking questions.  
“Where is ‘here’ anyway?”, asked Naruto, waking up somewhat. 

“You mean you don’t recognise the place?”, asked Sakura softly. 

Naruto looked down at the pockmarked earth. “The ground looks like it got into a fight with.. more ground. And lost”, he chuckled. 

Sakura was beginning to worry. It sounded like the sleep deprivation was starting to get to Naruto. 

Kitetsu meanwhile, stepped forward and clapped Naruto on the back. “Funnily enough, that’s almost exactly what happened here”, he said, as he walked forward and spread out his arms.

“Behold, the Crags of Heavenfall”. 

The pale, hollow light of twilight shined through gaps in the dark sea of clouds above them, shining down upon a bleak and devastated land. Like an undead corpse without a soul, the land seemed to be one that was alive, but only because it didn't realise that it was supposed to have died a long time ago. The uneven lights and shadows mixed with the uneven pockmarks and fissures all over the ground, the unhealthy orange of the rocks darkening and lightening with the wind that moved the clouds. Now and again errant breezes would lift the fine film of dust and rubble, sending them floating upwards and scattering them back down, like ashes on the wind. Altogether it gave an impression of complete and utter annihilation. 

Naruto gazed over the vista of rubble and wreckage. “What… what happened here?”. 

Yoroi turned to him with bitterness graven in his brow. “Don’t you remember? You were there”.

Kitetsu setpped forwards once more and spoke in a voice tinged with sorrow. “This is where Madara Uchiha sundered the sky itself”.

Naruto’s eyes grew wide as his mind connected what his eyes were showing him with what his brain remembered. 

“This is where the gods brought the heavens crashing down”, continued Kitetsu. “Where the Kazekage, the Tsuchikage and even the nine tails itself strove against the crushing death that blackened the clouds. This is where we all lost friends, comrades… where I lost my s-”. He stopped.

Naruto had almost heard a crack in his voice. Was Kitetsu human after all?

“Suffice to say, this is where hard truths were learned. Where we realised how meaningless our lives had been, training and murdering for nothing, and how easily the kage and the others were willing to throw them all away for people from other villages. Lord Kazuma chose this place to begin anew. To take the scene of our hardest defeat, and turn it into the one of our greatest triumph”.

He knelt down, weaving a series of handsigns, bit the tip of his thumb and wiped the blood on the ground. A series of markings appeared, emanating from his palm like the marks of a summoning jutsu, and the ground began to tremble as an opening began to appear in the rock. “Our great city is down this tunnel. Built beneath the ruins of the world’s greatest bloodshed, we have created a haven where we can build our strength and take the world by storm once everything is place. Welcome…. To the Village Hidden in the Ashes”.


	5. Kitetsu beaten?? The source of power revealed! (Or implied to be!! Sorta!!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slow update. I have no excuse I'm just bad with time. Hopefully the next chapter will be the last in this arc and we can get started with the time travel proper

As the tunnel opened in front of him, Naruto felt a sharp twinge of sensation in his right arm. As he flinched at the strange feeling, he saw Kitetsu fall to his knees, clutching his chest. Naruto’s eyes widened as he noticed the reaction. 

Yoroi approached Kitetsu, both terror and concern on his face. “You alright there boss?”, he asked without getting too close. 

“Kurama, what is this?”, asked Naruto quietly. 

Kurama closed his eyes. “Hmmm… there’s some unbelievably strong chakra coming out of that tunnel. In fact it’s pouring out of this entire landscape. Can’t you feel it?”, he asked. 

Naruto nodded. “Yeah...”, he said, feeling it like static electricity in the air, the hair on his neck rising up at the ….Power flowing out of the ground. 

“It feels… familiar somehow. I’ve definitely faced this before”. With a jolt it hit him. This was the same feeling he had felt when Kitetsu had used the wood style. “This is the first hokage’s chakra”, he said to Kurama, both recognition and fear showing in his eyes. “There’s… so much of it”. He clutched his arm as it twinged again. Was it reacting like this because it was made of Hashirama’s cells?

Naruto’s eyes widened as he looked at Kitetsu on his knees, clutching his chest. Did that mean Kitetsu’s entire body was made of it too? What exactly was going on here? Before he could ask one way or the other Kitetsu straightened up, wincing in pain. “….never been this bad before...”, he muttered, before stopping sharply.

“What are you all gawking at?”, he barked as everyone averted their eyes. 

A blur of motion at the edge of his vision caught Naruto’s eye as he looked up. Just above a particularly tall rock formation, a tiny black sparrow fluttered silently. Naruto’s face broke into a grin. That must be instructions from the leaf! Now he only had to figure out a way to get close to it unobserved. 

Before he could move, a small flash of light shone near the rock and the sparrow exploded into drops of ink, splattering on its surface. Naruto flinched, screaming a silent ‘no!’ as the last vestiges of the Leaf’s intel dripped down rock. 

Clenching his fist, Naruto hung his head and turned around. There was nothing for it. He’d have to proceed as planned and hope those instructions hadn’t been too important. 

As he pondered this, the hairs on the back of his neck rose up once again as he felt the unmistakable feeling of being watched. He squinted at the tall rock formation, but could see no one. Had he been imagining it? It was such a familiar feeling though, he could almost attach a name to it. He shook his head. That was impossible. He'd know if that man was nearby. 

The rough clouds above began to clear as the afternoon sun beat down on Naruto’s head. Stifling a yawn, he followed everyone else into the tunnel Kitetsu had opened. They followed him a few meters down the tunnel before he stopped abruptly.

“This is where I leave you”, he said, as footsteps echoed further down the tunnel.

A shinobi wearing the vest of the cloud but no headband, emerged out of the darkness, some sort of visor over her left eye. She stopped short of Kitetsu’s squad, all of whom eyed her warily, with the exception of Yoroi and Harui.

“Hold on, you’re one of the Raikage’s advisors!”, exclaimed Yoroi as Harui struggled to remember her name. 

The shinobi scowled. “That’s not important. I’m only here to escort you to the village. Come with me”. She stopped and inclined her head to Kitetsu, who nodded back respectfully. 

“Wait, aren’t you coming with us?”, asked Sakura as Kitetsu turned back to the entrance. 

“No”, he said shortly. “Like I said earlier, I have some maggots to dispose of first. Those mist spies cannot be allowed to return to their village alive. I’ll take care of them, you lot follow her into the base and finish your initiation” he said, gesturing at the visored woman. 

With that he turned around and left the tunnel, retracing the short distance he had walked.

Naruto turned back at looked at his retreating figure, as the rest of the party began following the visored cloud ninja further down the tunnel. He turned back to see that they had nearly left him behind. 

“Hurry up back there!”, called the cloud shinobi as Naruto snapped back into the present. 

Making a quick decision, his hands moved to form the familiar hand sign of the shadow clone justu, and with a telltale puff of smoke there was an identical Mizuki standing next to him. The two nodded to each other, and one set off after Kitetsu while the other caught up with the rest of the group. 

.

It had already been well over a day, and though Kakashi wasn’t usually the type to worry much, especially about the village’s best and brightest, he was worried about Naruto and Sakura. They were more than capable of handling themselves, he knew that, having watched them get to that stage from being nothing more than bumbling genin, which was probably why he couldn’t help worrying. 

They might be the most powerful shinobi in the world, but they were still his students.

It had been his idea earlier, to announce that Mizuki had gone missing. A lie, but one he hoped would help Naruto and Sakura infiltrate the enemy if the enemy were to hear of, and believe it.

Right now however, Kakashi’s mind was, as is the wont of the hokage, moving with great speed through incredibly important matters. After Shikamaru had explained the situation to him he had lost no time deciding on the best course of action to take. Even now, his eyes moved with the acuity of his old sharingan, jumping from word to word without missing a beat. The rustle of paper was the only sound that broke the silence of his office. The door to his room opened up and, quick as a (yellow) flash, Kakashi put away the icha icha novel he had been reading.

Shikamaru walked in accompanied by two other leaf chunin. “We’re still in the testing phase, but as best as we can, we’ve set it up”.

Kakashi nodded, getting up from his chair in a smooth motion and striding purposefully out of the room with the three ninja, with no indication whatsoever that he had been reading erotica not a few seconds earlier.

They walked down corridors and up flights of stairs until they entered a room at the top of the building. Wires and complicated looking equipment emerged from an array of screens set up at the end of the room. 

Several shinobi who had been tinkering with said equipment and testing various functions of the array paused and stood up as Kakashi entered the room.

“As you were”, said Kakashi as he studied the array. “Why is it that we never have the opportunity to test these things before a crisis? Just for once I’d like to be prepared”. 

Shikamaru grimaced. “Tell me about it. It can’t be helped. This here’s still very much in the prototype stage, and besides, the scientist who was spearheading the research into this whole radio wave technology died during the great war. His death severely set back basically everything to do with this”.

As kakashi took his place in front of the screen, Shikamaru added. “Still, we’re very lucky the other villages are sharing their information and resources with us now. We may be the most structurally powerful ninja village in the world, but the cloud’s got us beat in research and development”. 

After some more fiddling with dials, a shinobi wearing some sort of headset flashed a thumbs up at Shikamaru, at which all the others scrambled into position around various machines. Their leader walked up to Shikamaru, who listened as he gave his status report, and nodded when he was finished. 

“They’re all ready to go, Lord Hokage”, he said. “We’re only waiting on you now”. 

Kakashi nodded and put on another headset as the lights in the room were dimmed and the curtains were drawn shut. Several nonessential shinobi left the room as static filled the array of screens. 

“Confirming transmission from the Hidden Stone!”, reported a shinobi as one of the static filled screens buzzed into clarity, to reveal a hazy figure that resolved into the old tsuchikage. 

The old man squinted at the screen, as if trying to determine the best angle to squash a mosquito from, before his voice rang out in Kakashi’s ears.

“EHH? IS IT WORKING? DAMNED FANCY SCREENS WHAT IS THIS? THIS ISN’T EVEN WORKING, YOU TOLD ME IT WOULD-”. 

Kakashi yanked his headset off, the tsuchikage’s voice blasting his eardums at an ungodly volume. 

Every other shinobi in the room had flinched as well, several frantically adjusing dials and meters, until one of them gave a thumbs up. 

“Apologies, Lord Hokage. It should be better now”. 

Kakshi winced, wondering once again why he had accepted the job, and put on the headset once more, ready to whip it off at a moment’s notice.

Ohnoki’s voice was at a far more bearable volume this time, as Kakashi relaxed slightly, still ready to rip the headset off if need be. 

The old man's visage fizzled on the grainy screen, squinting downwards at the camera recording him. “Eh?”, he said, squinting harder. “Is that the hokage? I can’t tell through all this blurry noise. Ah, that’s much better”, he said as his image suddenly became clear. “If it isn’t the hokage. About time too. What took you so long??”.

Kakashi fought back the urge to protest that none of the other kage were even present yet. “Something came up, Lord Tsuchikage. You have my sincere apologies for having made you wait”.

Ohnoki’s brooding expression softened, his ego placated by Kakashi’s easy tone. As they spoke, the other screens fizzled to life, the other kage finally making an appearance. 

“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS SUDDEN EMERGENCY MEETING, HOKAGE??”, thundered the Raikage, his booming voice amplified by his incorrectly calibrated volume. Or perhaps it had been calibrated perfectly and he had simply meant to deafen everyone. 

All the shinobi in the room flinched once more, Kakashi ripped off his headset this time with a prepared prudence, while Shikamaru smiled at their discomfiture, having the foresight to only hold one ear to the headpiece.

There was a minor commotion as the technicians worked to lower the volume of the cloud’s signal, as the Mizukage took off her headset as well, and the Kazekage, Gaara, failed to react in any way. Ohnoki meanwhile muttered something about someone finally speaking audibly, and continued squinting at the screen as everyone put their headsets back on.

“Before we begin I’d just like to remind everyone that there’s interference on the airwaves so please speak clearly or we’ll end up with a situation like what happened at Ryuji peak” began Kakashi. The raikage’s eyes hardened as Ohnoki opened his mouth to speak but seemingly thought better of it.

“So”, replied the Mizukage lightly. “That’s how it is, huh? Now why don’t you explain what exactly you called us here for”. Both the Raikage and the Tsuchikage seemed to have quietened down and were waiting for Kakashi to speak. It seemed his words had had their desired effect.

“We’ve received an update on the Kazuma situation, that was so alarming, I decided it required all of your immediate attention”. “Spit it out then”, the raikage said.

Kakashi took a breath. “They have agents in the highest levels of every hidden village”. 

There was a pause as every kage absorbed his words, and Kakashi continued. “They’ve infiltrated us all utterly. Our every move, the most confidential details of our every operation, all of it is known to them”.

The static filled silence lengthened as no one said anything. Finally, Gaara broke it. “Do you have evidence of such a presumptious claim?”. 

Kakashi shook his head. “None I can present right this moment, but our source is very reliable”

The static resumed as no one spoke once more. “……..Well?”, said Kakashi when the pause had gotten long enough to be awkward. “You must understand, Lord Hokage”, began the Tsuchikage, “You’re asking us to take your word that we cannot trust our closest and most trusted advisors. This is not something we can simply accept as truth, without reliable evidence”. 

Gaara spoke up once again. “How would you react if I told you that you couldn’t trust Shikamaru over there, and refused to provide any explanation for those words”.

Kakashi remained silent. “Well put, Lord Kazekage”, said the Mizukage. “As they have said, we cannot in good faith accept such a claim”, she continued.  
The Raikage remained silent, his face wearing a brooding expression, his eyebrows furrowed like the thunderclouds his village was named after. 

“Lord Raikage?”, prompted Kakashi warily. His eyes snapped open. 

“I will not acknowledge such a preposterous attack on my village until you have some proof to back it up”. 

Kakashi frowned. “It is imperative that we move against Kazuma as soon as we can mobilise. The longer we delay, the more lives we put in danger”. He looked down. “However, any action we now take will be one that Kazuma will be fully aware of thanks to his information network that you’re all refusing to accept even the possibility of”. 

He stared at the ground, brow furrowed. “We absolutely must act, but anything we do is doomed to fail”. He looked up once more, seemingly at a loss for what to do. “It seems we’ve been outplayed”, he said to no one in particular.

“If that is all, I have important matters I must return to”, said the Raikage, cutting off his feed.

“Hold on, we can’t just do nothing!”, said Kakashi as the Tsuchikage disconnected as well. Gaara and the Mizukage gave him sympathetic looks. 

“I’m sorry, Lord Hokage, but as of right now we cannot act”, said the Mizukage. 

Kakashi closed his eyes and nodded resignedly. With that, both the other Kage disconnected as well.

Kakashi motioned to cut the feed and the monitors powered down, a hustle and bustle resuming as technicians went around the room disconnecting and deactivating various things. 

With a sigh, he stood up and walked out of the room, defeated, trailed by shinobi carrying stacks of paper and books. Shikamaru quietly followed behind as they walked down the stairs to the Hokage’s office. Kakashi opened the door and walked in, before motioning to the shinobi to wait outside.

Only Shikamaru followed him in as the door shut.

He walked across the room as he spoke. “I’ll get Sai to send Naruto and Sakura a missive with all of Sasuke’s information and our plan of action”.

The sunlight streamed into the room from the open window, but narrowed from a broad glow to a beam, to a ray as Shikamaru drew the curtains. He sat across Kakashi in the dark room and smiled as Kakshi began to weave hand signs. 

“That went perfectly”

.

Far away in a room humming with a strange electricity, a tall man stood up, removing the visor that sat over his eyes. The two guards that stood behind his chair snapped to attention as he disconnected various wires and placed the visor on a table behind him, a grin stretching his mouth eerily. 

His silver hair streamed down his shoulders, glittering in the eerie violet light that illuminated the entire room. He brought up a hand to his right eye, which was covered in bandages.

“That went perfectly”, he said under breath as he turned around. 

One of the guards squinted. “What was that, Lord Kazuma?”.

“Everything is falling into place”, replied the silver haired man. "The hidden villages are paralysed, and the final piece of chakra that we need is making its way towards us".

A low moan echoed through the room as Kazuma briskly walked past door after door of metal mesh, the gaunt men and women chained within watching him furtively when his shadow moved on their features as he walked. One of them groaned again in a low tone, but quietened very quickly when Kazuma shot him an annoyed glance.

“Do be quiet, Zura. Your pain is almost at an end. You have all served me faithfully and soon… very soon… you will all be rewarded for your service”. 

“Kazuma, you bastard”, called out a voice weakly from within another cell. Kazuma ignored it as he walked up to a wall of screens, his fingers flying across various keyboards, bringing up various video feeds. 

One such showed a group of shinobi standing in a ruined wasteland as one wearing a maroon vest doubled over in pain. Seconds passed before he stood back up. Kazuma put a hand to his chin. “It appears Kitetsu is reaching the end of his usefullness”. He turned back to the line of cell. “Looks like you’ll have a new roomate soon, Zura”. 

He turned back to the screen as a shinobi with light blue hair, wearing the leaf’s green, looked upwards, directly into the camera, at a dark figure fluttering in front of the lens. 

“Tch”, said the silver haired man as his fingers jumped from key to key once again. “That won’t do at all”. There was a brief pulse of light, and the dark fluttering figure splattered into ink that covered the lamera lens.  
“How inconvenient”, he muttered as he brought up other feeds.

One of them showed a dark haired, black clad shinobi skulking behind some rocks, looking away into the distance. His long black hair covered his left eye, as he gazed at something out of view. 

Kazuma brought up another screen, that showed what seemed to be nothing but trees. He fiddled around on his keyboard, and the screen changed to the same scene, albiet one filled with dark blues and oranges. Against the background of dark blue, several bright orange figures were clearly visible, hiding in the trees. 

Kazuma laughed out loud. “Who needs a Byakugan when you have thermal cameras”. He fiddled further with his instruments, zooming in on that particular field, examining each shinobi individually. “So the mist sent their elite. No matter, Kitetsu should be more than capable of taking care of them”. The camera continued to pan across the mist shinobi, when Kazuma suddenly stopped it over one particular shinobi, the one at the forefront. He gave off the same orange glow as his neighbours, but a further yellow glow emanated from his back. Kazuma’s eyes narrowed. “They sent one of the seven swordsmen?”. His grin widened. “The mist’s losses will indeed be severe this day”.  
He typed out a set of instructions speedily and sent them away before switching back to the feed. 

“You monster”, called a voice weakly from one of the mesh-doored cells. “You won’t get away with this”. Kazuma turned around. “Kai, I am truly sorry for what I’ve had to do to you. But your sacrifice will be worth it soon. I promise, when I rewrite history, I will prevent your partner’s death on the battlefield”. 

The low hum of the current almost succeeded in drowning out his soft voice. Kazuma walked away from his screens, going up to a full-sized mirror built into a wall. Gazing at his own face, he gently unwrapped the bandages that covered his right eye.

As the last of the cloth fell to the floor, Kazuma examined his eye. Wires ran from his eye socket into a module on his back. He brought up his left arm, which was covered in some sort of metal arm-computer, and gazed at some readouts for a while. After a few seconds, he rapidly pressed buttons on the panel on his arm, and winced as his eye reacted, changing color from what it was, becoming a dark black instead. He smiled broadly

“Do you think this eye makes me look unnerving?”, he said jovially, turning to his guards. The two guards eyed each other before one answered. “Uhhh… no, sir. It goes very well with your silver eye”. 

Kazuma chuckled. “You don’t have to lie, you know, I know it looks terrible”. He walked up to his screens once more. “But that doesn’t matter. The chakra modulation system seems to be fully functional, which is what’s important. Looks like all those failed protoypes were worth it after all”. He turned to the line of prison cells. 

“This time tomorrow none of you will exist!”, he yelled, holding his arms out proudly. “And I will be in the past, saving the lives of all those that you loved”. 

He walked past the wall of cells to a line of tanks filled with green liquid of some sort, each tank having a small object suspended within it. He stood there, admiring the tanks for a while, his hands clasped behind his back. "All of our work, our effort... Tomorrow, it will all finally pay off", he said quietly. He shortly examined the screens adjacent to each tank as he walked back, each screen bringing up the image of one of tailed beasts followed by several graphs and readings. Seemingly satisfied, he returned to his array of monitors. 

He turned back to his camera screens, re examining the feeds he had gone over earlier. He stopped abruptly when he arrived at the feed focused on the black clad man. The man was now looking directly at him, gazing into the camera with a piercing eye. An involuntary shiver ran up Kazuma’s spine as he was treated to the full force of Sasuke Uchiha’s baleful glare. Kazuma stared up into the screen defiantly, smiling all the while, knowing there was no way Sasuke could possibly see him, but on edge nonetheless.

Sasuke’s mouth moved, clearly enough that Kazuma could make out the words even without sound.

“I’m coming for you”  
.

Sasuke Uchiha sat stock still, as unmoving as the rocks around him, invisible to the naked eye, assuming said eye possessed no ocular kekke genkai. His mastery of the transparency jutsu rivaled even that of the legendary pervert, Jiraiya’s. His gaze was fixed on the small tunnel that had appeared behind the group of shinobi he had been tailing.

His quarry seemed to be entirely unaware of his presence, which was just how he wanted it. Their inability to sense Sasuke’s chakra informed him that they possessed no sensor types like Karin, or any sort of visual jutsu capable of spotting him. Not that even a sensor type shinobi would be able to spot him where they were.

The landscape around them was of a most singular sort. It might have been something to do with the unbelievable amounts of chakra that had devastated the land in the past war, but the land itself seemed to be a mess of chakra. All kinds of chakra emanated and swirled around the rocks and rock formations that dotted the area. It would be near impossible for anyone to distinguish any singular chakra signature within this haze of wildly intermingling chakra signatures.  
Sasuke frowned. The most powerful and dominant type of chakra, emanating from the ground and the spires of rock, was all too easily identifiable. It was clearly the chakra of Hashirama Senju, a distinctive chakra that overrode and drowned out all the other kinds. 

The overpowering emanations that rose from the landscape in invisible waves reminded Sasuke of their source within Kazuma’s base. The source of Kazuma’s super soldiers’ extraordinary power. If only he knew where Kazuma was, Sasuke thought to himself, he would be able to destroy it, and his entire operation, with no fear of being caught off guard or taken down by some contingency. 

If he had learned anything about the man, it was to not underestimate him at any cost.

Sasuke looked back up as his primary quarry, Kitetsu, fell to his knees. Alert, Sasuke tensed, but did not move. He observed carefully as one of the rogue shinobi, a man with light bluish white hair, grabbed his right shoulder with his left arm. 

Something about the man seemed incredibly familiar to Sasuke, but he couldn’t place it. The other rogue leaf shinobi with him also seemed similarly familiar, but Sasuke had dismissed the feeling right at the initial sighting. They were leaf ninja, he had probably caught sight of their faces between missions during his genin years, and was just remembering that. 

He continued to observe them, reading the movement of their lips from where he hid. His vision was nothing if not terrifyingly accurate. A slight blur of motion caught his eye as he looked up at a small black bird hovering close to where he hid. Motionless, Sasuke glanced back at his prey to see if any of them had reacted in any way, and was rewarded for his caution.

The pale haired leaf shinobi was staring at the bird as well, his eyes almost exactly on Sasuke. Instinctively, Sasuke held his breath. Something about the intensity of the man’s gaze was so familiar… it almost reminded him of Naruto.

He inhaled sharply as a bolt of realisation hit him. That was the very ninja that had framed Naruto for stealing the scroll of seals all those years ago!! Mizuki, his old academy instructor!! 

His eyes widened as he marked the difference in Mizuki’s manner and expression. He was clearly a very different man than the one he used to be. Either he had already undergone the procedure and was now one of Kazuma’s supersoldiers, or else he hoped to be. Whatever the case, he was someone to be wary of.

Sasuke realised that he would have to be very careful until he had found out exactly what he was dealing with here. He didn’t like unexpected surprises, and with all the ones he had already come across that day he was in no mood for another unforseen defeat. 

A small pulse of light shone behind him as the bird splattered into drops of ink that narrowly missed splashing all over Sasuke's face. Annoyed, Sasuke turned around, inhaling sharply when he noticed the cleverly concealed camera lens in the rock face.  
.

Kitetsu walked slowly up the slope of the tunnel, the light of the ashen sky filtering in like the last drops of leftover tea falling from the bottom of the teabag. Every movement hurt, every step and every swing of his hands causing sharp pain to shoot through his muscles. 

Almost at the mouth of the tunnel, he stopped sharply as excruciating pain blossomed through his chest. He clutched his chest, breathing heavily. He could not fail now. Lord Kazuma and the hopes of hundreds depended on him. Standing erect with an effort, he continued walking upwards slowly. 

He knew not why his body suddenly troubled him so. All the past weeks had been ones of perfect functionality, his body seamlessly adapting to the power Lord Kazuma had given him. Could it be rejecting that power now? Why? What had changed? He made a mental note to ask Lord Kazuma about it upon his triumphant return.

It wouldn’t be long now. Soon, he would see his son and his beloved laugh together again. Lord Kazuma would make it so. And they would live together in a world without kage.

Fighting back the pain, he walked forward fearlessly, his silhouette enveloped by the light of the entrance of the tunnel

.

The unit of mist shinobi tensed as one, like an invisible spring, noting the emergence of the man who had massacred their comrades. Their leader gritted his teeth once more, before reminding himself to stay focused. Lady Mizukage was counting on him. 

Silent as the fog native to their land, they moved quietly, each shinobi taking up a position of strategic importance around Kitetsu. Gliding over the landscape, the leader of the unit waited a short distance ahead of the man, ready to reveal himself. 

One unlucky mist shinobi chose a hiding spot that was already taken. As he settled into place, ready for action, a hand clamped over his mouth. Taken by surprise, he glanced backwards, terrified, into a stange grey eye that seemed to spiral inwards endlessly, the tomoe within moving round and round and round and... 

The shinobi slumped to the floor, unconscious. “Sorry”, said Sasuke silently. “There’s really no time to explain”. Setting the man down gently, Sasuke settled back in to watch the conflict.

Kitetsu walked heedlessly to the center of the clearing. He smiled, a smile that betrayed no sign of the agonising pain that shot through his chest at the motion. All of the mist shinobi surrounding him tensed, their hands on their weapons. Their leader, directly in front of him, drew his twin swords from his back, holding them together as one.

Kitetsu’s voice echoed. “Evening, gentlemen”.

Their leader tensed in shock, and barely had time to position his blades before the ground erupted under his feet.

Sasuke scowled in the exact manner that an Irish criminal mastermind would, had he been aware that he had just been referenced in a fanfiction based on a manga about ninja. He watched silently as enormous tendrils and tree roots emerged from the ground, staying stock still even as the ground shook beneath his feet, gazing unmovingly at the chaos.

These mist shinobi had seen this carnage once before, and were ready for it, even if they had been caught by surprise. They nimbly vaulted from branch to branch as the enormous and deadly wooden roots thrashed about. A cry echoed as one was hit from behind, and was crushed under the burgeoning growths. All semblance of stealth abandoned, their priority now was solely survival. That and taking down their target.

The leader of the mist shinobi jumped up high, and Sasuke’s eyes widened in recognition as the shinobi brandished his twin swords above him. Sasuke had felt the bite of those swords in the past, or more accurately, his Susanoo’ had. 

Chojuro yelled as the bandages wrapping his blades unraveled, a massive construct of chakra forming around them instead. The gigantic blue chakra hammer he had created smashed into the writhing roots below him, shattering them into fragments of wood that were blown outwards in a wave of shrapnel. 

Kitetsu grinned, and stopped doing so when it began to hurt. It seemed this battle would not be won as easily as the last. His hands clasped together, he leaped upwards as a giant tendril of wood burst beneath him, carrying him towards his opponent, who was still suspended in the air from the shock of his own attack. 

Kitetsu clenched his teeth, focusing his chakra intensely, as a series of gigantic roots rose beside him, weaving themselves into a giant hand that extended from the ground. Chojuro barely had time to swing his hammer once more before the gigantic palm swatted him down like a fly. The shockwave from the two attacks colliding once more blew the dust and shrapnel-laden outwards fiercely. 

Sasuke narrowed his eyes as stone and wood fragments battered the rock around him. Quietly, he allowed a few of the Susanoo’s ribs to manifest in front of him, just in time to deflect the sharp piece of wood that had been about to skewer him.

Dozens of feet away, Naruto covered his eyes as the wave of dust washed down the tunnel, and spat as some of hit got into his mouth. Village hidden in the ashes indeed, it was way too dusty here. Unable to see clearly from where he was, and mildly worried for Chojuro, who he had recognised, Naruto leapt forward onto the mishmash of destroyed roots without thinking.

Sasuke froze as light glinted against the pale hair of a shinobi who had emerged from the tunnel he had been watching earlier. Mizuki had entered the melee. Sasuke shifted in place. He was loth to sit and do nothing while shinobi from an allied village were facing a force that possibly outmatched them. But at the same time, movement would give away his element of surprise, and he didn’t want another shinobi choosing to kill themselves rather than face his interrogation.

Kitetsu gathered his faculties and shook off the haze of pain and fear he was in. Realising he was lying on his back, he tried to get up, but found himself unable to do so. “Wh… What?”, he said groggily, trying to stand up once more.

“Here, let me”, said a voice beside him, and a hand reached down. 

Biting back a scream at the pain that shot through his arm when he moved it, Kitetsu reached up and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. It took him a minute to place the face of the man standing beside him. “….Mizuki. Why are you here?”. 

“I was just worried about you, ya know?”, Naruto replied, thinking it a plausible excuse. “What’s wrong with you? You’re moving sluggishly, your reaction seems off. Are you alright?”, he continued.

Kitetsu attempted to shake the haze of confusion away once again, and failed. “I’ll be just fine”, he said, undermining his words somewhat by clutching his chest as pain shot through his heart. “Whatever it is, Lord Kazuma will fix it. Now listen to me”, he said, turning to Naruto. “I want you to return down that tunnel, and get to the village already. I can finish them off here, don’t worry about me”. 

Both of them looked back up as a blue line of chakra shot into the sky. Chojuro’s figure emerged from the haze of debris, walking back up the incline of the root he had been thrown over, his blades now projecting a massive sword of chakra that he held aloft. “You’re going to pay for the people you killed!”, he yelled, before breaking into a run.

Kitetsu gritted his teeth, as his right shoulder suddenly swelled and bubbled like some ghastly clay before returning to its regular shape. Both Naruto and Kitetsu stared at his shoulder aghast, at a loss for words.

“….What was that?”, said Naruto quietly as Kitetsu turned to face the charging Chojuro at the same time.

“Go, I’ll be fine”, he said with an air of finality, before charging forwards.

Naruto and Sasuke both watched as the two combatants leapt into the air. Chojuro’s blade scythed through the air as Kitetsu’s hands moved and his voice echoed. “Wood style! Wood golem ju-”, he yelled before he was abruptly cut off as his left arm suddenly bulged, ripping the fabric of his vest, and suddenly exploded.

Naruto jumped forwards as Kitetsu fell, Hiramekarei having cleanly cut through his left shoulder, severing the arm whose explosion had pushed him out of the blade’s path. 

Kitetsu’s arm itself was a quandry on its own. As it fell, the skin pulsed and turned the brown of bark, before exploding into branches and leaves. 

By the time the arm hit the ground it was a fully grown tree, branches poking out haphazardly in all directions.  
.  
Kazuma swore as he watched events unfolding on the screen. “No no no no no NO NO NO!”. He turned around and kicked a cell door behind him. Kitetsu’s system should have been able to handle the strain for at least another day! It was too soon for his body to be overwhelmed. It meant that somewhere, somehow, Kazuma had miscalculated and that wouldn’t do. Everything had to be perfect. There was no room for error when meddling with time.

He turned back to the screen. It seemed that he had more pressing problems to deal with in the moment. He had been counting on Kitetsu to dispose of the mist trash. Now he would have to come up with an alternate way of getting rid of them before they could enter his base. 

He narrowed his eyes as that rogue leaf shinobi, Mizuki, jumped forward and caught Kitetsu. He put a hand to his chin. Perhaps the situation wasn’t as bad as it seemed. His eyes followed Mizuki and Kitetsu's descent into the tree that had sprung from Kitetsu’s arm, and finally looked away when they fell into its leafage, outside of his cameras’ view.  
. 

Naruto caught Kitetsu’s prone form falling through the air. The man was barely conscious, his severed shoulder seemingly having morphed into some sort of wooden amalgamation. No blood flowed and there was no wound. Merely twisted wood melding into flesh. 

“What.. what happened?”, asked Naruto, wind rushing against his face as he fell through the branches. As he tried to land on one, his leg slipped off the branch where he had awkwardly placed it, and he tumbled forward. He held on tightly to Kitetsu, fearing that any impact against his injured body might be his last, but he needn’t have.

Kurama had focused Naruto’s chakra onto his remaining foot, which stayed firmly stuck to the branch he had been on, resulting in Naruto dangling off the branch on a single foot like some kind of mutated Cashew nut. Having his head suddenly whip around like that caused Naruto to temporarily black out, but when he came to he still found himself clutching an unconscious Kitetsu. 

Cursing his lack of sleep and lack of coordination, something he realised he was doing far too often, Naruto let himself down gently, landing in the shade of the tree that used to be Kitetsu’s arm. He gently lay Kitetsu down on the floor. The man was a murderer, but seeing the horrific way he had been mangled made Naruto wince.

Kitetsu’s eyes opened feebly. “L…. Lord Kazuma”, he said faintly. 

Naruto understood. “I’ll get you to him”. He kneeled down and removed the mangled vest that had been torn by the wood style warping Kitetsu’s skin. He peeled the torn fabric downwards from the severed shoulder, yelping when his hand hit something metal that caused his entire arm to hum like it was carrying an electric current.

Yanking his arm back, Naruto paused, and then gingerly reached for the fabric once more. What had that feeling been? Peeling back the fabric more carefully this time, Naruto’s eyes widened as they took in the chakra receiver embedded directly over Kitetsu’s heart.

. 

Sasuke stood up. He couldn’t afford to sit idle any longer. He couldn’t have that Kitetsu dying before he had revealed Kazuma’s location to him. With a deft movement he jumped out of his hiding spot, attracting sudden gazes of first alarm, followed by suspicion, and then recognition from the various mist ninja. 

Chojuro had raised his blade, but lowered it as he placed who Sasuke was. Sasuke landed nimbly next to him, above the wreckage of the wooden palm. 

Panting, the mist shinobi replaced Hiramekarei on his back, relaxing somewhat. “Sasuke Uchiha. It’s been a while”. 

Sasuke nodded back at him, remembering that their last meeting had been.. somewhat awkward.

“I’m going to have to take this rogue shinobi off your hands”, he said to Chojuro, who closed his eyes upon hearing that, before opening them after seconds of deliberation.

“I’m sorry, but I'm afraid I cannot allow that. This man is responsible for the murder of dozens of mist shinobi. He must face justice for his crimes”.  
.

Naruto lay Kitetsu down slowly, gazing with horrified fascination at the chakra receiver poking out of Kitetsu’s chest, right where his heart was. “Wha- What does this mean?”. His mind was racing. As far as Naruto knew, only Rinnegan users could make use of chakra receivers to manipulate others, and that too only if they were already dead. Did that mean Kitetsu was nothing more than a corpse? 

Gingerly Naruto put his hand next to the receiver, over Kitetsu’s heart. ...There was no doubt. The man’s body was warm, and Naruto could feel the steady beat of his heart. He was definitely alive. Then what was the point of the receiver? What was its purpose? What exactly was it receiving? Of course, there was a way he could find out that information almost immediately.

Naruto closed his eyes, as Kurama, sensing his intentions, did the same, and Nature energy began to flow into his body.  
.

Sasuke jumped off the wreckage, landing on the ground near the Kitetsu arm tree. 

Chojuro followed his lead, landing in front of him. He seemed nervous, but held his chin up. “This man belongs to the hidden mist now, please understand”, he said wearily. 

Sasuke frowned. “Look, you can have him after I’m done with him. I just need the information that he holds”. 

Chojuro grimaced. “Uhh.. Not to doubt your skills, but you have something of a reputation for ruthlessness when it comes to dealing with criminal scum. I really can’t have him die here before he answers for his crimes”. 

Sasuke’s frown deepened. Every second wasted was a second Kitetsu inched closer to death and farther away from revealing Kazuma’s location.

He took a step towards the massive tree as Chojuro stepped in his path at the same time.

.

Naruto’s expression of concentration lifted as he opened his eyes, now gold. His pupils had turned rectangular, bisected by the catlike slits of the nine tails’ eyes. Naruto glaced upwards, feeling the enormous flow of chakra all around him through the sixpaths’ sage mode. 

The tree spreading all around him was lit up like an active volcano. Hashirama Senju’s chakra flowed upwards in currents, their very force almost like a physical wind. A large amount of it flowed from Kitetsu, he noticed, his body shedding it in waves that seemed to almost overwhelm his own natural chakra completely. 

His eyes quickly caught a focused stream of the chakra flowing downwards instead of up. Carefully following the path of the stream downwards, he gasped as he realised it flowed directly into Kitetsu’s chakra receiver. 

His mind attempting to race, but continuously tripping over its own feet, Naruto desperately tried to figure out what it meant. He was sure there was a connection here, between Kitetsu using Hashirama’s chakra, and the stream of it flowing into the chakra receiver embedded in his heart. Shikamaru or Sakura would’ve been able to piece it together immediately, he thought, as he attempted reach the logical conclusion that the facts he had unearthed led to. 

Kurama sighed from within him. “This is just sad, Naruto. You need to sleep, and soon”. He shook his head before continuing resignedly. “It means the man is able to use the chakra of the first hokage, because it’s being channeled into him from somewhere else. Such a thing shouldn’t be possible, and clearly his body can’t handle it, though apparently he was able to for some time”.

Naruto looked upwards. “So all we need to do is follow that stream of chakra to its source-”. “And we should find the source of his unnatural power”, Kurama finished.


	6. The Beginning of the End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much to write and convey and so little time and so much more to do as well and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

plink.  
plink.  
plink.

The soft echoes of drops of water were the only sound in the otherwise utterly silent cave. Dimly lit by rays of light that reluctantly shone through cracks in the large boulder walling off the cave from the lake outside, the cave appeared to be completely and utterly undisturbed. Small, blind fish moved around the shallow waters that flooded the area, feeding on other, smaller creatures that grew off the faint, faint light that struggled through the suffocating darkness to reach the water below. This peaceful, isolated little slice of untouched silence, was rudely and abruptly broken by a strange fizzling.

An odd, self contained mixture of light and shadow formed within the cave, resolving itself into the silhouette of a person. Tinged with all the hues of the rainbow, though in a severely muted fashion, the silhouette stood silently, as if waiting for something, flickering like an out of tune television. Its patience was seemingly rewarded as more of these self sustaining forms of color appeared around it, their appearances accompanied by that same fizzling. The first silhouette smiled.

“...have to agree that it really is a most convenient jutsu”, it began, some of its words lost in the static. They began to converse in earnest.  
“Let’s get down to business already, I don’t have time to waste. We move tomorrow?”  
“We’ve received word they’re planning to mobilise today”  
“………………………”  
“That won’t do at all”  
“No, it won’t. Do any of you have a better idea?”  
“I don’t like this. At great personal risk our agents have risked their-”  
“That doesn’t change the fact that we just aren’t ready to move against them yet”  
“…. remember, they don’t know any of that. They think we won’t move at all”  
“…..afford to be overconfident. We know for certain they…”  
“Cease your yammering. We move tomorrow and that’s final. I don’t know about you four but we of the ………. can’t mobilise any sooner”  
“…… How about you, L-……… any sooner?”  
“I’m afraid not. We’re overextended. Tomorrow is the soonest we can take action. Your agents will just have to take care of themselves till then”  
“…………..”  
“If that’s all, I’m leaving. And let’s not use this jutsu again, …….. could hardly make out your voices”  
One of the silhouettes, the largest one by far, fizzled out.  
“Makes you wonder how the Akatsuki were fine with it. At any rate, I think we’ve done all we can right now”  
Two more of the silhouettes fizzled out. The remaining two looked balefully at each other  
“These agents you mentioned, they wouldn’t happen to include……”  
One of them nodded at the other  
“Ah. I see”. It was hard to tell through the muted light of the projection, but they almost looked worried.  
“We’ll move as fast as we can”  
And the remaining two winked out. 

.

Naruto kept his gaze fixed forwards, as he walked behind Sakura and the rest of their group, the visored ex-cloud shinobi leading them deeper and deeper into the tunnel. Their footsteps raised small puffs of dust and rubble with each movement, and Naruto had to resist the urge to cough. More than that, a part of him was worried that if he closed his eyes, he wouldn’t open them again for a good while. 

Yorui coughed loudly from up ahead, the noise bouncing off the walls of the tunnel, earning him an annoyed glare from their visored chaperone. “Do keep it down”, she said shortly, not pausing in her steady downward pace. The tunnel seemed to get dimmer and dimmer as they walked further and further away from its entryway. Movement caught Naruto’s eye, but he realised it was only the young mist genin clutching the hand of his much older comrade. Naruto idly wondered about the two as they walked. Was he the old man’s grandson or something? 

As it grew dark enough that even just looking forward was hard, the visored ninja made a hand sign, and the floor beneath their feet began to glow with a soft green light, bright enough that they could see their surroundings once again. “Psst. Mizuki”. Naruto looked back up sharply, realising he had been dozing off. “Y-yeah?”, he asked, before realising it had been Sakura calling him. “We need a plan”, she whispered back, soft enough that no one else heard them. It helped that the two mist ninja were whispering among themselves too. What did not help was the darkness, and the silence, and the soft, almost hypnotic green light. “Right”, he nodded, struggling not to drift into soft and warm dreams of ramen and tiny little frogs.

The slope of the tunnel increased as they went even further down, and it began to curve to the right as they resumed their conversation. “We have two objectives here. Find Kazuma, and discover how he’s doing all this”. “Hmm”, Naruto nodded sleepily. “Hold on,” he said, in a moment of lucidity. “Won’t we find out the second one if we just stick around with these guys?”. Sakura nodded. “That’s definitely a possibility. So one of us should go after Kazuma then, and the other can stay here and learn what they can”. Naruto nodded sagely

“Move faster back there”, the visored shinobi called back, increasing her pace to a quick jog. As everyone sped up to match it, Naruto asked, “So who’s staying and who’s leaving?”. Sakura didn’t reply, seemingly giving it thought. Her frown deepened as the tunnel continued to do so as well, Naruto’s attention drawn to the walls, which were now widening out, the tunnel itself becoming quite large. “I’m kinda worried about those two mist ninja”, he said quietly, as the aforementioned duo walked before them, unaware that they were being discussed. Sakura nodded thoughtfully. 

“Chances are, whatever gave Kitetsu the wood style has something to do with body modification, which I’ll understand better than you would, being a medical ninja and all”, she said, breaking her thoughtful silence. Naruto nodded, his eyebrows scrunched together in an effort to focus on her words and not slip away into dreamland. “Which means I’ll stay with this group then, find out how Kazuma gives them their power, and you go after Kazuma himself”. Naruto nodded once more, not bothering to follow her logic but arriving at a conclusion he understood. Noticing the old man give the young boy a reassuring pat on the head, Naruto’s fist clenched in silent anger at the manipulation of the hopeful and the innocent. “We’re going to put a stop to this for good”. 

As if his very words could reshape reality, the entire group came to a halt, Naruto perfectly in step with them this time, having been focused on the the two mist ninja and catching their sudden halt. “What’s the matter?”, Harui called out as the visored shinobi seemingly stared straight ahead, unmoving. With a flash Naruto realised she was probably reading something off that visor over her eyes. “There’s been a change of plans. Kitetsu is having trouble crushing the ants outside. Ordinarily Lord Kazuma would send a grunt to deal with them but since we’re launching our invasion at midnight everyone is busy”. She wrinkled her upper lip. “Meaning I’ll have to take care of this myself”. 

With a sigh of resignation she made a few rapid hand signs, and water welled up from the seemingly solid, dust covered crystal ground, forming into a mirror image of the ninja herself. The water clone turned to Naruto and the others. “You lot, come with me”. She turned to her mirror image. “You will retrieve Kitetsu then?”, she asked. “And take out the trash as well”, replied the other, and turning around, vanished back up the tunnel in a blur of chakra enhanced speed. 

Naruto and Sakura followed her progress, mildly worried, as the others began their dark, dusty march once again. 

.

Kazuma glared at his hastily scribbled calculations with an intensity that would have cowed the enthusiasm of even Might Guy. As events played out before him he had bitten his lip unconsciously, and now blood trickled down his chin. The two shinobi standing guard behind him exchanged looks for the second time in many moments. That was never a good sign. None of them were looking forward to Kazuma taking out his frustrations on the prisoners in the cells. They especially didn’t want to have to peel what would be left of them off the cell walls.

Kazuma whipped his arm computer upwards, fingers moving in a frantic blur. He hadn’t been able to account for it, Kitetsu’s undue malfunction. He hadn’t been able to account for Sasuke Uchiha finding them so soon, and he hadn’t accounted for the Hokage discovering the true scale of their operation before the invasion had launched. Thankfully that issue had solved itself when the other kage had refused to heed his warning, but at least the Hidden Leaf would remain on guard, which complicated matters. One way or another, he told himself, it would all come to a head by midnight, when his carefully crafted ‘invasion’ would finally begin, and when he would set his plan into motion and secure what he was truly after. The thought that had kept him working ceaselessly all this time, the thought of him returned to a time in the past, armed with future knowledge, and his own carefully cultivated power, ready and able to avert all the bloodshed of all these long years... It brought a smile to his face, one he quickly wiped on reminding himself how pressing matters currently were.

It would all be for nothing if he couldn’t destroy the mist ninja banging at his door, and more importantly, improvise a strategy against that crafty Uchiha.

He gritted his teeth. It had been years. YEARS since he had nearly died in the Great War, since he had been found and revived by his…. partner, since he had decided to abandon his village in the consequent days, and everything else since. Years of hard work and experimentation and investigation and high risk infiltration. Years of close calls and difficult study and breaking the codes that that damned Kabuto had written all his records in. Years of travelling the world setting up apparatus that would only come to fruition after further years of planning. It was so close he could touch it. Only a few more hours and… he shivered in anticipation. 

His dreamlike smile was broken by an impatient beeping from his arm computer. Snapping back to reality, Kazuma distractedly wiped away the blood on his chin and pushed a button, frowning as he read what his screen had to say about it. His eyes widened. It was him.“Yes? What is it now?”, he said, seemingly into the air. “Yes, I am aware he has found us. I am reasonably confident however, that he has not found me, nor is he aware of any of the chakra modulation apparatus we’ve installed in the villages”. He stood up as he seemingly listened to a voice talking out of somewhere. “I’ve sent Natsui to clean things up outside. If I’m right, Uchiha won’t take the bait, and will come down here instead, trying to find me. Natsui can handle the mist on her own”. He paced across the cells as he listened to the voice, his footsteps triggering soft exclamations of fear from the inhabitants of a cell when he got too close. He frowned in annoyance at something no one else could see

“Don’t forget this whole plan is the product of my genius. Without me you’d be just another…. I know I owe you my life, but let’s face it, I was just in the right place at the right time. You’d have saved anyone to save your own hide”. He smiled, and continued in response to something else. “Yes, the test was a success. The eye is working perfectly, and I’m able to remotely trigger its capabilities.”. His smile widened. “I cannot deny I am dying to try it out, but I understand it would be foolish to do so against Uchiha. After all, we developed this strategy for use against Naruto Uzumaki”. He paused again as the voice said something. “Don’t worry”, he snapped. “I’ll think of something. You have my word, Sasuke Uchiha will be unconscious and in our power before the day is out”. He turned back to his screens and his notes, examining them while listening at the same time. All at once, he stopped, dropping the papers he had been rifling through, which scattered all about the floor. “What did you say?”. He put a hand to his ear as if trying to verify that he actually was hearing what he was hearing. “THE TAILED BEAST’S CHAKRA? ALL OF THEM? THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!”, he yelled, turning back to his screen and frantically bringing up readouts. 

“I don’t care what you think you felt, there is just no way Mizuki has such a thing. He is not a jinchuuriki, leave alone a jinchuuriki of every single tailed beast.”, he muttered as he brought up the camera focused on the Kitetsu arm tree and noted with worry that Sasuke Uchiha stood in front of it, face to face with Chojuro, who seemed agitated. Stymied, Kazuma stood still as the voice in his ear went on, seemingly at a loss for what to do. Finally he turned around, hand on his chin. “Unless… Unless I wasn’t the only one who traveled the world for years after the war, scavenging for the tailed beasts’ power. The odds are impossibly low, and yet not zero, that another also… yes.. I see..”. He turned back to the screen. It seemed he had misjudged the nature of this Mizuki entirely. He seemed a man almost as driven and devious as himself, to do something as insane and risky as infusing himself with chakra from every tailed beast. Even Kazuma wasn’t that crazy. There was a reason he had them all in separated tanks, controlled and cultivated, instead of taking them directly into himself. Playing host to even just one tailed beast put an incredible strain on the body. 

Kazuma frowned. It seemed that there was another player on the field. What was Mizuki’s intent? Was he here to usurp Kazuma’s organisation and take his forces for himself? The man was clearly in a mad pursuit of power. What else would drive a man to risk his life and sanity by joining himself with broken pieces of nine monsters. 

Kazuma’s lip curled in disgust. Power. What a petty thing to destroy lives over. Clearly the man Mizuki was a maniac like Orochimaru. He made note to find and end Mizuki once he had successfully made the journey into the past. Kazuma had never heard of Occam’s razor, Occam having never been born in the shinobi world, and didn’t think to put two and two together, that the simplest explanation was usually the right one, and that Mizuki was in fact, Naruto Uzumaki.

Ignoring the piteous cries of the damned in the cells around him, he put his hand to his ear once more, speaking to his invisible listener, his partner and benefactor. “I’m sorry to have to ask this of you, but I am no longer confident in Natsui’s ability to take care of Mizuki herself. If you are able.. would you please send one of you to take him out?”. He waited hesitantly for his partner’s reply. He did not fear the man, but he knew there was no force on Earth that could get the man to act if he did not choose to do so willingly. His partner could be a bit.... whimsical. He froze as his partner replied, and sighed in relief.

He straightened up like a zombie reanimated, and smiled a comparably ghastly smile. “Excellent. You take care of Mizuki then, and leave Sasuke to me. Oh, and don’t kill him if at all you’re able”, he added as an afterthought. “I just realised, this Mizuki is an excellent test substitute for Naruto Uzumaki, being the same kind of jinchuuriki. If we can capture and test our strategy on him we can estimate how it would work against Naruto”. He nodded in response to his partner. “Right, I understand”. With a flurry of motion he disconnected the call, walking back to his wall of screens, smiling in anticipation of defeating the legendary Sasuke Uchiha. How he longed to one up those shinobi that thought that brute strength was everything. He would take great pleasure indeed in outsmarting this most cunning of opponents. “He won’t know what hit him” 

.

Kakashi sat in his chair, pondering how he had let things get this bad before realising that they had. Just what had he sent Naruto and Sakura into? One small consolation to him was the fact that they had sent them all of Sasuke’s intel and their plan of action. Once they had read that, he trusted that the duo would be able to coordinate with Sasuke and bring the threat to an end.

He sat up abruptly as Shikamaru barged in, his hand clutching a letter. “Lord Sixth, you have to read this right now. It’s a personal missive from the Raikage”. 

Kakshi sat up and received the parchment, examining it closely. He went through its words silently: 

“Lord Hokage,

A number of things have come to my attention over the last few hours that makes me believe this communique is necessary. To be clear, I do not regret any past decisions, nor is this an effort to correct any past actions. It is simply something I deem necessary in the context of the urgency of the current situation. 

A few days prior you accepted a mission request from our village to infiltrate and capture the rogue cloud shinobi spotted in the land of fire, escaped with powerful stolen justu from our village. At the time we too believed them to be independent operators with no connection to the Kazuma situation we were collectively investigating. That being the case we only shared details of the mission we deemed relevant to the Leaf in its efforts to capture these shinobi, and, as I’m sure you noticed, were intentionally vague about many of them. I do not imply that those actions were anything less than absolutely necessary, but now that we know how much worse things are compared to what we thought them to be, I understand that it has become necessary to remove that vagueness for our collective benefit.

The justu and information the rogue ninja escaped with were justu and intel we had stolen years prior from the Hidden Leaf Village, back in the days of the Third Great Ninja War. They include many of the barrier and sealing jutsu used to protect your village, as well as the layout of a lot of your most vital structures. You may even be familiar with one of the operatives we collaborated with back in the day, Genno the trapper. We have had access to and knowledge of this information for years.”

Kakashi’s grip on the letter tightened. How long had the raikage been planning to sit on this information? Were they not allied villages now? He understood the need to be prepared for anything, but this.. this was just a breach of trust. 

“You may be wondering at this point why the cloud never launched a full scale invasion of the leaf if we possessed these tactical advantages all this time, though I believe that question answers itself. The Hidden Leaf has always been home to absurdly powerful ninja, such as the Hokage before you, the slug princess, or the Yellow flash before her, who I’ve had the misfortune of going up against myself. All that aside, between that vile Danzo and your hokage, your village has always been in a position of political strength and influence. We could hardly wage a unilateral war against both the leaf and every single one of its allied villages. And then you’ve always been careful to keep the most dangerous tailed beast, the nine tails, for yourself. 

The reason I take the time to explain this is to make it clear that it was never cowardice, but careful reasoning that prevented us from making use of this information.”

Kakashi sighed at the man’s need to placate his own ego. “Get on with it already”, he thought, as he resumed reading. 

“I understand that we bear some responsibility for Kazuma getting his hands on this information, but given the fact that it could have been the critical advantage of a war at anytime I don’t regret holding on to it. We could not risk the safety of the cloud, or lose such an advantage against a potential foe”

Kakshi’s eyes narrowed at the hypocrisy. “Sure didn’t mind risking the safety of the leaf though, did you?”, he thought as he continued

“Now that the information is in enemy hands I have seen fit to warn you of it, and thus give you time to prepare for its use against your village. In this regard you will have the full support of the cloud, at least until we finalise on a plan and strategy to eventually move against Kazuma.

The Fourth Raikage” 

Kakshi crumpled the paper into a ball as his eyebrows furrowed. “Well, that explains a lot of things”. Shikamaru expression of concern and alarm did not shift. “Explains a lot of things?? It does a lot more than that and you know it. What now??”. Kakashi put a hand to his chin, eyes brooding. Shikamaru waited in silence as the gears turned in Kakashi’s head.  
Finally he stood up, and walked out of the room, ignoring Shikamaru. “Hey! Wait up!”, he yelled, following after him. “What’s the play here?? What are we doing?”. Kakashi replied brusquely as he walked. “Nothing. We do nothing”. Shikamaru stopped walking, eyes narrowed, before setting off behind Kakashi again, who did not stop.

“Anything we do will tip them off that we know. Right now, they don’t know we know. The only thing we can do now, is depend on Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura, and trust that they can delay Kazuma long enough for us to-”. “Pardon me for interrupting here, but that seems like an unnecessary risk to take”, said Shikamaru. “As your advisor I feel duty bound to tell you there are too many variables to leave everything to those three, powerful though they may be. Any number of things could have happened out there. They could have blown their cover, or gotten separated, or hell, maybe they didn’t even receive our message about the plan”. Kakashi shook his head. “All those things may be, but I still think moving here and now would do more harm than good. We don’t want Kazuma to change his plans. Right now we know what we’re dealing with. It’s not worth throwing away that advantage for some temporary sense of security”. 

Shikamaru was forced to agree with his assessment. “Damnit all, Naruto”, he thought to himself as he recalled the depth of the dark circles under Naruto’s eyes that morning he had reported for the mission. “I hope everything’s going according to plan. And I hope you’ve gotten some sleep”. He nodded, clearing away his misgivings. “By now the three of them have rendezvoused, understood the plan and are working together to carry it out. Surely Naruto has slept at least once over the last few days”. He nodded to himself again. “Have some faith in your comrades, Shikamaru. Things can’t go that wrong, can they?”

.

Naruto smiled at the small, cute little Kuramas floating in the air in front of him. “Naruto!”, a voice hissed next to him, snapping him out of his reverie. He shook his head and looked up. Had he been imagining things? He turned back to Sakura. “What?”, he hissed back. “Look alive, we’re almost there”. Naruto strained his eyes as wide open as they would stay, and forced himself to focus on the present. 

The tunnel had gotten wider and wider and wider, until it seemed a tunnel no longer, but a cave system in of itself. Their group slowed their pace as Yoroi, Harui, and the two mist ninja took it all in, looking around. “We don’t have time to gawk”, said their chaperone, slowing just a little so as not to leave them behind. “We’re almost at the Hidden Ash Village, where you will all be tested and initiated. We must hurry, you’ll all be moving out at midnight. The grand invasion is only a few hours away”. Naruto and Sakura snapped to attention. “Midnight??”, Naruto whispered to Sakura, alarmed. She looked back at him, just as alarmed. Everything was moving so quickly. Did they really only have a few hours left to both take down the puppetmaster and his puppets???

The visored ninja stopped, followed by the cloud, and then the mist ninja. Sakura stopped as well, and put a hand on Naruto’s shoulder before he could crash into the old man. “Here we are”, said their chaperone almost.. proudly. “Our base, the Hidden Ash”. She spread out her arms, as everyone else looked ahead and inhaled collectively. 

The walls of the cave arched outwards and upwards, higher and higher and higher.... Naruto realised they must be quite deep underground indeed for there to be this much upward room. The ceiling was dimly visible through clouds of dust and ash that hung as if suspended, high above the village. Oh, and the village itself! 

A vast plateau of stone rose out of the center of the enormous cavern. Surrounded on all sides by a sheer drop into an abyss with no visible bottom, the plateau rose up like an island, as if it had been raised by use of earth style ninjutsu. Which, Naruto realised, it probably had. Broken rays of light shone through the clouds of dust that swirled high above, splintering and sundering under their assault, the paths of the beams clearly visible through the ash. Massive pillars shot upwards around the rim of the plateau, disappearing into the clouds of dust but presumably connecting with the cave ceiling far above. 

The buildings were made of wood and stone. Stern, practical and spartan, the fact that this was a military base and not a pleasure retreat was obvious. However, even the military design of the buildings had a certain pleasing symmetry to them. The incline, the distance, and the strange lighting disguised their sizes somewhat, and Naruto did a double take upon realising that nearly all of them approached the size of the Hokage’s mansion. Even among these mighty structures though, one stood out above the rest. Naruto assumed this was Kazuma’s base.

The village was a hub of frenetic activity. Shinobi from every hidden village, it seemed, some sporting vests and scratched out headbands with symbols Naruto had never seen before, bustled around at speeds that would have earned the approval of the fifth hokage, in terms of how urgently they seemed to want to finish their work. Shinobi entered and left through openings all over the walls, just as large as the one they were staring out of. How many tunnels led to this place? How had they been made? And where did they emerge? These questions ate away at Naruto as he wondered just how long this insidious metropolis had been functioning. 

Between the buildings, interspersed at intervals that were almost regular, stalagmites rose out of the ground, towering over the neighbouring structures and creating an eerie echo of an underground skyline for the village. And the chakra. He could feel it in every pore of his body. There could be no doubt. This village was the source of the maelstrom of chakra that washed over the land up above. Though he wasn’t in sage mode, he could sense with just his natural awareness that the chakra seemed to be emanating from the stalagmites. Such was its intensity that even a regular non sensory shinobi could feel it permeating everything. 

And then suddenly he was in sage mode.

“What?”

A rush of sixpaths’ sage chakra flowed into him, directly causing him to enter that state. His eyes turned gold as the color of his iris and shape of his pupils changed. “What?”, repeated Naruto again, stupefied. Harui turned to him. “Yeah, isn’t it something?”. His voice trailed off when he noticed Naruto’s eyes. A second later, Naruto’s head was filled with the memories of his shadow clone, as it charged onto the battlefield, caught the heavily injured Kitetsu, discovered the chakra receiver embedded in his heart, and entered the sixpaths sage mode to discover where it had been coming from. And then suddenly a sharp, piercing pain in his chest, and then nothing.

Naruto paused as Yoroi turned around as well, and nodded in understanding as Harui exclaimed in surprise. It had taken Naruto a second, but he had pieced together what had happened. His shadow clone had been dispelled, causing its accumulated sage chakra to flow into him. Judging by its last memory of sharp pain in the chest, it seemed like it had been stabbed. But how?? And who?? How could anyone have snuck up on him in the sixpaths sage mode? His sensory capabilities were unparalleled. And this person had presumably killed his shadow clone before it could react in time?? 

Naruto snapped out of his train of thought to see every other shinobi staring in horror at his golden cross pupilled eyes. 

.

Sasuke was growing weary of arguing. Chojuro seemed entirely against even giving him a chance to talk to Kitetsu, so convinced was he that Sasuke would somehow use the opportunity to murder him. Sasuke hid a sigh. How could he possibly convey to Chojuro that his reputation for ruthlessness among criminals and oathbreakers wasn’t exactly... genuine? It was one he had carefully cultivated himself in order to make interrogating them easier, but he didn’t actually kill most of the rogue ninja he came across, and usually chose to disable them via genjutsu whenever possible.

He couldn’t very well just tell Chojuro that though, and expect him to believe it. Sasuke pushed down his growing frustration with the day. It would not do to lose his cool now. He held out his arms appeasingly and Chojuro tensed at the motion. “Look”, he said. “You want him alive, and I just want some information out of him. We’re both on the same side here, there’s no need for us to quarrel. Why don’t we make a compromise? You can come with me and be his bodyguard the whole time I interrogate him, and make sure for yourself that he comes out of it unscathed, how about that?”. 

Chojuro considered the proposition seriously, Sasuke could tell. Finally however, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, I really am, but I’ve heard just how deadly you Uchihas can make your genjutsu. We all saw Danzo use the eye of Shisui the teleporter, to catch Lord Mifune in a genjutsu without him even realising it, and I’ve heard it took the fifth Hokage herself to save Kakashi of the Sharingan, from your- apologies. To save the Sixth Hokage from your elder brother’s genjutsu. I don’t want to have to run after her if you destroy Kitetsu’s mind”. Sasuke gritted his teeth. What would it take to convince this man? Would it be quicker to just take him out for now and apologise later? 

“You may not believe me, but we only have a few hours before the madman that did that”, he said, gesturing to the tree next to them, “releases his fury on the entire world! We don't have the luxury of time! So please, let me just get Kazuma’s location out of the man and then you can do whatever you like! If you don’t, the Hidden Mist, and every other village, will lose a lot more good people than they already have, at the hands of men like him”. While Chojuro put a hand to his chin, considering the proposition, Sasuke blinked out of existence and appeared right in front of the tree, running inside before Chojuro had realised he was gone. He didn’t have the time to argue, he could apologise later.

He rushed inside, sword drawn, expecting to see Mizuki and the near dead Kitetsu. What greeted his eyes instead, was just freshly turned mud. Kitetsu and Mizuki were both nowhere to be found. Sasuke cursed and struck the ground with a blast of lightning from his sword in frustration, just as Chojuro ran in, Hiramekarei drawn. Chojuro looked in horror at the absence of any enemy shinobi, and the fading lightning where they had lain, and his eyes grew wide. “I knew it! You killed them!”

Sasuke blinked. This could not seriously be happening.

.

Natsui of the hidden cloud leapt out of the opening of the tunnel Kitetsu had unblocked in one of his last ever acts of ninjutsu, ready and prepared to take out an entire unit of mist anbu. A very queer sight greeted her eyes instead. She halted her progress and hid next to the tunnel’s entrance, examining events through her visor, one that was outfitted with cameras that translated chakra into visible radiation, giving the wearer the ability to ‘see’ chakra, much like a sharingan or a byakugan user. 

Chojuro of the Mist let loose a battle cry as he swung hiramekarei in hammer form at some other shinobi he was fighting, one who was moving too quickly for her to see as anything more than a black blur. The other shinobi was dancing circles around Chojuro, and it was clear he could take him out anytime he wanted to, but he seemed more interested in gesticulating and yelling rather than actually fighting. Natsui smiled. She had no idea who the other man was, but he would make her job much easier. 

She held her hands together, gathering her chakra, focusing on carefully moulding it from the constant stream of chakra that flowed into her body from the receiver embedded in her heart. She grinned as viscous red chakra began to bubble out of her skin, a dark red tailed beast cloak forming around her. Wasting no more time, she jumped upwards at a speed even faster than the black clad man, and rushed at Chojuro, a feral grin on her face. The chakra cloak around her right arm distended until it became the shape and form of a gigantic clawed paw, and she struck at Chojuro at a speed that was far beyond his ability to react to.

She flinched in surprise as her clawed hand struck something solid, something that refused to break, stopping her momentum completely and catching her in midair. She stared at the strange purple ribs that had seemingly materialised out of thin air around Chojuro, that had taken the full brunt of her attack without breaking, despite how frail and ethereal they looked. She had seen this kind of chakra before, during the war, she was sure of it. 

The black clad man had, incredibly, intercepted her blow, standing in front of Chojuro as he was now, those strange ribs manifesting around him. Now that he wasn’t moving, Natsui was finally able to get a good look at him, and with that look her heart leapt into her mouth. She had made a critical miscalculation here. 

Just as an arm manifested from the ribs, made of the same purple chakra, and swung downwards at her with a chakra sword, she disengaged and retreated back to the tunnel’s entrance with the same speed that she had rushed out of it. Sasuke Uchiha?? Here?? Now?? Was there a plan for this? Did Lord Kazuma have some sort of contingency?? As far as she was aware, taking down the celestial duo had been planned for after defeating the hidden villages, once they had eliminated all the other factors. Even as powerful as she was, she had no illusions about what she was capable of. She could definitely take out Chojuro, the mist ANBU, and maybe even take on the entire Hidden Mist Village and win, but even one of the two celestial shinobi that wielded the power of the sixpaths was beyond everyone except possibly Lord Kazuma’s ability to defeat. 

She surveyed the situation from her place of retreat at the tunnel’s mouth. Sasuke did not leave his position in front of Chojuro, standing guard with those peculiar purple ribs around him, that arm and chakra sword extending out of them, and Chojuro himself seemed to be catching his breath behind Sasuke, his hands on his knees, looking warily at his protector.

Natsui’s mind raced. She had already seen Uchiha’s repertoire of jutsu during the war, but she never once recalled seeing these ribs. What sort of jutsu was this? She ran through the list of what she knew Uchiha to be capable of, and arrived at his ability to create that giant warrior out of chakra that Madara had used to devastating effect. She looked back at those ribs, understanding in her eyes. That must be some lesser form of that chakra warrior jutsu. Of course. But the warrior itself was nowhere to be seen. Which must mean... “He’s going easy on me”. She grimaced. This was not a foe she could hope to thwart alone, she had the sense to see that. At the same time she couldn’t just let him walk free to disrupt their plans as he wished. And there were still hours till midnight, and so much more that needed to be done before they were ready to move out.

Natsui closed her eyes as she realised the enormity of her task. She would have to keep the Legendary Sasuke Uchiha fully occupied for the next few hours, and hold him here until either the invasion began or Lord Kazuma saw fit to send her backup. Realistically, she realised that backup would probably not make too much of a difference. The gap in power was simply too large to be bridged by anyone except Lord Kazuma himself. And he certainly wouldn’t be risking his neck for one of his subordinates, nor did she want him to. He was infinitely more important in the grand plan. So then, she would very likely have to sacrifice her life, and keep Sasuke busy till it didn’t matter anymore.

She smiled. They had all been willing to give their lives when they joined, Kitetsu included. After all, none of it would matter once Lord Kazuma had rewritten history. Reaching deep within and pulling out as much of the tailed beast’s chakra as she could, she felt it bubble out as it began to tear through her skin, transforming it. She heard the cursed creature’s voice in her head as she drew on its power.

“Are you sure you want to do this? None of your comrades listened to me but there’s no reason to throw your life away. You cannot win against this opponent, so please..”. Natsui ignored its devious words, drawing out more and more of its power, until blue flames engulfed her, and a monstrous flaming blue cat stood where she had crouched. It was nowhere near the size of the real thing, but it was still large enough to dwarf Sasuke’s spectral purple ribs.

The two-tails smiled, its eyes gleaming yellow and green, as it looked up and met Sasuke’s scorching gaze. 

And just like that, the battle was over.

Chojuro put a hand to his forehead in secondhand embarrassment as the enemy shinobi keeled over, her tailed beast’s chakra flickering out as Sasuke caught her before she could tumble off into the crevasses of the broken ground. He put her down and looked ahead into the tunnel she had emerged from, and then turned back to Chojuro, stifling a smile. 

Finally. Something had gone his way for once. He had been dreading another unexpected turn of events, but then she had made the mistake of looking directly into his eyes. He shook his head. A foolish error, and if he weren’t more merciful than he made himself out to be, one that could’ve been her last. “I know you think I killed that man, but I didn’t, I swear it! I’m off to find him now!”, he yelled at Chojuro, and turned around and sped into the tunnel without waiting for a response. Chojuro opened his mouth to yell one, and then stopped when he realised its futility. 

He clenched his fist at his incompetence, and how things had spiralled out of his control. Lady Mizukage would not be pleased. He was not looking forward to the harsh rebuke he would get on returning. But more importantly, the man who had murdered an entire unit of his comrades had gotten away scot free. Resolve showing on his face, he split Hiramekarei into two, holding one twin sword in each hand. No. He would not just give up. He would follow behind Sasuke and catch the murderer himself. 

He hopped up the wreckage of broken wood and ground, towards the tunnel opening Sasuke had gone into. “And just where do you think you’re going?”, said a hauntingly familiar voice behind him. Chojuro tried to whirl around, but his feet were rooted to the ground and wouldn’t listen to him. He tried to channel chakra into Hiramekarei, but he felt it going elsewhere, getting weaker, and weaker, and.... He blinked as his vision went blurry, wobbled, and fell forward, the world around him turning into darkness.

One by one, every other mist ninja still standing, no longer was.

.

Naruto looked at his alarmed companions with equal alarm. “Wha- wha...”, stammered Yoroi, pointing at Naruto’s eyes. “Mizuki, your eyes. They’re. Yellow”, hissed Sakura. Suddenly, their visored chaperone collapsed into a puddle of water (literally, turning into a puddle of water), sending another ripple of shock through everyone gathered there. “What’s going on??”, yelled Yoroi, drawing a kunai as his partner drew his shortsword. The two mist ninja went on guard as well, the old man standing protectively in front of the boy, kunai drawn. “Ah-”, began Naruto, when Sakura moved in a blur of green, and Yoroi and Harui crumpled to the floor, unconscious. “Phew-”, said Naruto, wiping the sweat from his forehead, as Sakura dusted off her hands. 

“What’s going on? What is this?”, the old man said defiantly. “Relax”, said Sakura gently. “We’re not going to hurt you”. The old man did not lower his kunai. “Are you double agents, is that it? Secretly working against Lord Kazuma? Is that it?”. Naruto and Sakura exchanged nervous glances. “Look, we’ll tell you everything, just put the kunai down”. 

The old man stared at them both suspiciously, eyes darting nervously from Naruto to Sakura to Naruto back again. "I can't go back to the mist.. I can't let them torture haru..", he muttered under his breath. He jumped when Naruto’s sage chakra wore off and his eyes returned to normal. “We’re frie-” began Naruto, before his words involuntarily turned into a yawn. Rubbing his eyes, Naruto repeated, “We’re friends. We promise. We don’t mean you any harm”. 

Slowly, the man’s kunai began lower. “I think they’re alright, grandpa”, the boy added hesitantly. Nodding shakily, the old man put down his kunai, and looked up at Naruto and Sakura. 

Letting loose a sigh of relief, Naruto and Sakura relaxed, Naruto sitting down. “You see-”, began Sakura, when the old man yelled. “INTRUDERS! INTRUDERS! ENEMY NINJA HAVE INFILTRATED THE BASE! HELP!”

The bustle of activity that was the hidden ash came to a standstill as the gaze of every shinobi focused on them as one

“Crap”, swore Sakura under her breath.

.

Kazuma grinned at the results of his tinkering. His plan was foolproof. He checked and double checked the fine mesh of wire that ran over his body, and checked once again the integrity of the circuits powering it. He nodded, satisfied that the radiation insulation effect was in fact, functioning as expected, and moved to checking his specially modified hallway. 

He ensured that the circuitry in the walls was properly concealed, that the copper wires that looped around the room weren’t visible to the naked eye. He offered a small and private thanks to the gods that Sasuke Uchiha did not possess a Byakugan along with his Sharingan and Rinnegan. He would never see this coming. “Right. Shielding is functional”. He checked off another item on his arm computer.

“And now for field testing”. Kazuma rapidly entered commands into his arm computer, powering on both the circuit encasing his body and the circuit encasing the hallway. “Right then. Guards. Release... hmmm.... Release Kai. He’s been getting on my nerves lately”. The guards nodded, walking over to a cell, and entering a code into the buttons near the door. The door unlocked with an audible sound, and the electricity pulsing through the cell fizzled out. Almost immediately, cries of pain echoed out of the cell as its two inhabitants began to yell in agony. Ignoring them, the guards walked in and removed the chains from one of them, entering a series of codes to do so. 

They carried the screaming man out of the cell, closing the door and locking it behind them. “Quickly, fools. He’s no use to me dead!”, barked Kazuma, and the guards doubled their pace, running with the man in their hands and dumping him in the hallway. Eagerly, Kazuma moved to the door and closed it. “Excellent. The circuit is complete. Test Log omega zero one, chakra modulation system inverse wavelength field test one, subject 143, given name Kai Hamazaki of the hidden rain”. As he spoke, the man’s screaming quietened into whimpering, before slowly ceasing altogther. The man himself was gaunt and thin, his clothes torn and bloodstained.

“Subject was part of the failed Jashin line of experiments, see Log Sigma five seven for more details”, continued Kazuma as the man struggled to his feet, his hands running over his body hesitantly. “Im.. impossible”, he muttered, apparently surprised to find himself in one piece. “I’m... alive. The pain... it’s gone! It’s gone!!”. The man burst into peals of sobbing filled laughter, as if unable to believe his predicament. “Kazuma you madman, you actually did it! You’ve saved me! The pain is finally gone!”. Kazuma grinned, the expression distorting his face. "That's because your own chakra was overwhelming your- actually, it is of no consequence".

The man looked up at Kazuma, his tear streaked smile slowly fading as he noticed his expression. “Y- your eye. What did you to do your eye?”, he asked in horror, noticing the wires emerging from it. “That is also of no consequence to you”, said Kazuma matter of factly. “You.. what are you planning to do to me?”, screamed the man in terror, backing away from Kazuma. “Subject seems to be in full possession of its mental faculties”, continued Kazuma, ignoring the man. “St.. stay away from me! You monster! You’re insane! You’re completely insane!”. Kazuma smiled once again, and began to advance on the man.

“Commencing inverse wavelength test. Kai my friend,” he said, smiling disarmingly. “Wh..what?”, asked the man, quivering in a corner as far away from Kazuma as he could get. “Defend yourself!”, snarled Kazuma, charging towards him, brandishing a kunai. Kai yelped, turning to run but seeing nowhere to go. Turning back, he flinched as Kazuma brought the kunai down, covering his head with his hands and shivering in terror as Kazuma held the blade over his head. “How pathetic. You cannot even fight back. Whatever happened to the spirited shinobi who was willing to lay down his life for a chance at bringing his family back from the dead. Whatever happened to that brave man who was willing to go through the twisted torture of Jashin to bring them back? Eh? Where is that man, KAI?”, he yelled, slashing the kunai across his arms and cutting deep. 

Kai yelled and backpedalled, blood dripping from the cuts across his forearms. “Y.. you keep my family out of your filthy mouth!”, he yelled, desperation and the faintest hints of fury in his eyes. “Yes, yes!”, yelled Kazuma. “Call up that anger, that rage! Fight back, or when I go back in time I will find your dear wife and end her before you two ever meet. Your dear, dear daughter will never have even been born”.

With a broken yell of rage, Kai barrelled at Kazuma, who evaded him with that ghastly smile etched onto his face. “Excellent! Hit me with that famous kekke genkai of yours!”. Kai gritted his chattering teeth, his tears intermingling with the blood staining his face. “Your twisted life ends today, Kazuma”, he said in an unsteady voice, before weaving hand signs. 

“Yes! Yes! That’s the spirit!”, crowed Kazuma as Kai’s chakra flared and he yelled: “Steam style, Scalding stream!”, and blew air out of his mouth furiously. Kazuma made no attempt to dodge, or indeed, did anything other than observe, his face a picture of anticipation. No steam came out of Kai’s mouth. Nothing other than slightly warm air, and perhaps a little saliva, escaped his lips.

“Wh.. what? My ninjutsu! What did you do to my ninjutsu?!”. Kazuma clapped his hands in a rare expression of jubiliation. “Marvelous! The inverse wavelength field can be localised! This test is a resounding success!”. He laughed out loud as Kai fell to his knees, defeated. “Now then, time to test the functionality of the chakra shielding device within the field”. He entered commands into his arm computer as Kai looked up in helpless anticipation, and gasped when Kazuma’s wired eye changed colour. Kazuma smiled, weaving handsigns. “This one I copied from the famous Asuma Sarutobi of the Twelve guardian shinobi. Did you know he was actually killed by the only recorded practioner of the cult of Jashin, the same cult whose experiments we attempted to replicate on you?”, he said to Kai like he was sharing an interesting fact about snails. His grin suddenly turned savage. “Fire style! Burning ash!”. A dark could of ashen smoke left his mouth and engulfed the kneeling man. 

The guards could hear him coughing helplessly within it. “Sir, you can’t kill him yet, you still haven’t recorded his data on the sigma five line of experime-”, one of them began, when Kazuma clicked his teeth, and the cloud of smoke became a ball of fire.

.

Sasuke frantically ran down the length of the tunnel, not needing any help to see in the dark. He could faintly hear the noises of a base in operation echoing from up ahead, though the noises were severely dampened by the clouds of dust and ash that covered everything. Suddenly he heard a voice clearly echo above all other noises. “Intruders! Intruders! Enemy ninja have infiltrated the base! Help!”. 

Sasuke frowned and smoothly activated his transparency jutsu, accelerating his speed as he ran. Had he been spotted, or was the alarm bring raised for someone else? Had the mist succeded in infiltrating the place? Or rather, failed to, judging by the raised alarm. Growing impatient, he focused his chakra through his rinnegan. He didn’t want to overuse it, but as they got closer and closer to midnight he had less and less time to find and take care of Kazuma. He had already thoroughly investigated the hidden ash over the last week and had never found Kazuma in it. But as his invasion drew ever closer, Sasuke had a hunch that he would show himself, if only to inspire his troops. 

The tomoe on his rinngean having reformed, Sasuke blinked out of existence and appeared far ahead, and then did so again, moving even farther ahead. He hated having to use this techinque just to increase his speed of movement, but he frankly couldn’t afford to waste time here.  
.

Naruto and Sakura froze as the attention of the entire village turned to them. Struggling to stay awake and focused, Naruto clapped his face with his hands. “Sakura. You have to get out now”. “What?”, she said, looking at him incredulously. “You have to find the source of his army’s power. Out there I saw a chakra receiver embedded in Kitetsu’s heart, chanelling the first Hokage’s chakra into him. It’s the same technique Nagato used with the Pains”. Sakura’s eyes widened. “Wherever that chakra was coming from, it has to have a source, and I’m willing to bet that’s probably where all this other chakra is coming from too”, he said, gesturing broadly around them. 

“But this chakra, it seems to be coming from those stalagmites”, responded Sakura. Naruto nodded, concurring. “Which means”, she continued, “It’s being channeled into them somehow.. Probably from below”. Naruto nodded once again, keeping up. Sakura looked at him. “If we head underneath the village we might be able to find exactly where it originates”. Naruto quickly bit his own thumb as hordes of shinobi from all over the cavern began to leap towards them. Quickly weaving the signs of the summoning jutsu, he slammed his palm to the ground, and an old, wart covered toad with bright purple hair appeared where he had. 

“Old lady! I need your help and we don’t have much time”. Shima, the toad who had reverse summoned Naruto into the Hidden Leaf during that fateful invasion led by Pain, nodded, understanding the gravity of the situation immediately. “Naruto, they’re almost on us”, said Sakura nervously, as the ranks of ash shinobi began to close in, and the two mist ninja watched fearfully from a distance they had backed away to. 

“There’s some real powerful chakra coming out of those rocks, as I’m sure you can sense”. Shima nodded. “You got that right”. “I need you to use sage mode and show Sakura exactly where it’s coming from so we can find its source”. She crossed her arms. “You can leave it to me”. “Alright. Get out of here, go on!”, he yelled, picking up the toad and tossing her to Sakura unceremoniously. Expression determined, Sakura caught her, muttered an apology to the toad, and launched herself at the drop surrounding the village. Several of the approaching shinobi broke off towards her, but she blew through them, scattering them like bowling pins with the force of a single punch. 

.

Sasuke blew out of the tunnel almost too quickly to stop himself, and nearly collided head on with the shinobi standing at its head, Mizuki, he remembered. Just in time he activated his Amenotajikara once again, blipping out and reappearing on the cavern wall. The rock who’s place he had taken whacked Naruto on the back of the head.

“Ow”, he exclaimed, rubbing the point of impact

Sasuke settled in on the wall quietly, watching as the shinobi of the hidden ash converged upon Mizuki. So Mizuki had been the cause of the raised alarm. Of course. The man was only after power, in the end. He had betrayed the leaf the second he could gain nothing more from them. Sasuke wondered why he would betray Kazuma before getting his hands on his power though... He thought about it carefully as Mizuki began to fend off the waves of shinobi approaching him, exhibiting a level of taijutsu skill that Sasuke had never seen outside of shinobi on the level of Kage. 

Slowly, Sasuke began to understand. Perhaps Mizuki wasn’t after Kazuma’s power at all. Perhaps he knew that taking in that power was fatal, and only pretended to play along to get this far. Perhaps he had been after Kazuma’s army and resources the whole time. Which power hungry shinobi wouldn’t desire such things? “Yes..”, thought Sasuke, peering into the melee with the piercing acuity of his sharingan. “He hasn’t killed a single one. He’s taking them all down… non-lethally”. 

He smiled, mildly impressed despite himself. It seemed that Mizuki definitely had an interest in keeping Kazuma’s army intact. More than that, watching him fight reaffirmed his opinion that this was not the same Mizuki that had been imprisoned years ago. The man had changed beyond recognition. Who knew what he had done in the intervening years. He could have any number of nasty tricks up his sleeve. Sasuke resolved to make taking out Mizuki his first priority after he had taken care of Kazuma. 

Once he had dealt with Kazuma and Mizuki, he could destroy the facility that was the source of the army’s power without having to fear an unlooked for counterattack. The facility had been the one place he had been unable to infiltrate, solely because it was home to Kazuma’s partner, and if that man got wind of Sasuke’s sniffing around, it would all be over.

As the melee began to grow more intense, Sasuke looked upwards sharply as motion caught his attention. The doors of the largest building were opening. A tall, silver haired man walked out of the building that rose above all the others, and Sasuke's eyes widened as his heart skipped a beat. Was his infuriatingly uncooperative search finally at an end? Had the mastermind of this entire scheme finally revealed himself?

His voice echoed through the cavern, broadcast, Sasuke realised, from the stalagmites. "That's quite enough, my loyal soldiers". As one, a wave of silence passed through the throng of shinobi. One by one each ninja turned and fell to their knees as the man descended dramatically, jumping down from the terrace he had been standing on, and landing perfectly in the only beam of sunlight that made it to the bottom of the cavern uninterrupted. The light glinted off his hair, giving him the illusion of a golden aura, almost too blinding to look directly at. Ripples of "Lord Kazuma! It's Lord Kazuma!" passed through his army as he held out his arms in the light, standing like a benevolent diety walking among men.

Sasuke rolled his eyes

Mizuki had stopped fighting and was looking up at Kazuma along with every other shinobi with a pair of eyes. Sasuke put a hand on his sword. Now would be the perfect time to take out Mizuki, when he was distracted. He could see it clearly in his head. All he need do was coat his blade in lightning and the black fire of the amaterasu, and cut the man cleanly in half. He wouldn't be walking away from that. But on the other hand... doing so would give away his element of surprise against Kazuma. And there always was the possiblity that the two would take each other out. Indeed, that seemed to be the case as Kazuma approached Mizuki.

"Mizuki of the Hidden Leaf! You who have faced the nine tails itself, and lived to tell the tale!". Sasuke rolled his eyes again. He could count on one hand the number of people Naruto had actually killed. The knucklehead was wiser than he was in many ways, but too soft by far. 

"You who have scoured the world as I have, gathering power for yourself, and found the world wanting, as I did, and so decided to change it for yourself! You who hold some of the power of all nine tailed beasts within you, I salute you!". Sasuke narrowed his eyes. What was Kazuma's game here? 

"You managed to infiltrate my army and even enter into the very heart of my operation! Your skill is undeniable! Therefore, Mizuki, I willl do you the honor of battling you myself!". The assembled shinobi collectively inhaled as small commotions broke out. Cries of "Lord Kazuma!" and "No, you can't!" echoed as various shinobi broke out yelling. "Calm yourselves, my loyal soldiers!", Kazuma's voice echoed once again. "Do you not have faith in your leader? Have I not made each and every one of you into gods? Have I not given you power over your own destinies? ARE WE NOT ON THE VERY CUSP, OF ULTIMATE VICTORY??". The crowd broke into loud and raucious cheers at Kazuma's impassioned words. Sasuke meanwhile, began to move stealthily along the cavern wall, away from Mizuki and towards Kazuma

"Come then!", yelled Kazuma, freezing Sasuke in his tracks. "What do you wait for, Mizuki of the Hidden Leaf! Show me the power you have worked so hard to gain over these years, show me the prowess of one who wields the strength of all nine!"


	7. An interlude- Death of a man, Birth of a god

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yup the next one will definitely be the end of this arc and if it isn't there is literally nothing I can say to apologise because I am just really really bad at planning and I swear this isnt intentional please have mercy I'm preemptively sorry

Kaido of the Hidden Cloud, known for a part of his life as D, ranked only below C, Killer Bee, and the Lord Ay the Raikage, lay gasping for breath, struggling to breathe and finding himself entirely unable to do so. He had lain on the ground for hours as chaos ensued around him. The clash of steel against monsters that could not be cut by it. The sound of explosions tore through the air the air as the titanic beast that had all but killed him, unleashed its unfeeling fury.

His ears slowly grew deaf to even the grave voices of the reanimated Hokage, who mustered and boosted the morale of those more fortunate than he had been, those who had not fallen. His eyes did not see one Uchiha, and then another one, absorb the ten tails and receive the power of the sixpaths. He did not hear their mocking, cynical voices, and the impassioned, hopeful one that answered them both.

He did not see the shinobi who had been mocked and made fun of his whole life, stand up to Madara Uchiha himself, and prove that true strength did not come from inherited kekke genkai or cosmic sixpaths abilites. He did not see him demonstrate that it came from a shinobi’s willingness to work hard and protect their ninja way, that it came from a strong will and the ability to greet any situation with a smile and a thumbs up.

He did not feel the combined emotions of the Allied Forces as they reached out to Obito Uchiha through the bond that Naruto Uzumaki had forged with him, nor did he witness the rebirth of the celestial duo after that, coming into their true powers as manifestations of the original wielders of the light and shadow styles.

What he did see, was death. What he did hear, was despair. What he did feel, was fear.

As he lay on the ground helpless, he did hear the cries of desperation of others like him. He heard their pain, their anguish, and felt those feelings in himself. He lay on the scarred ground, powerless to so much as shield his eyes from the blinding flashes of blurred colors that filled his vision. He felt it, keenly. His inability. His…. Impotence…. as he lay there, unable to decide whether he lived or died.

He had seen them act like gods, like they had the right to decide who lived and who died, simply because they had the power to do so. He had heard the other Madara, the fake one, mock their futility. “Now, we show them despair”, he had said. And then he had, and those had been the last coherent words he had ever heard. A giant tendril of root had sucked the very chakra out of him, and he lay there since, helpless and unmoving, struggling to breathe.

All his life in the Hidden cloud, all the great and pioneering advances he had been so praised for in his village, all the hope he had held for the future, the hope he saw in the potential for utilising new kinds of technology to finally dominate the other villages… all those hopes died slowly over the course of his prolonged torment. As he struggled to move from this second to the next second, clinging to life with a ferocity he didn’t know he was capable of, his despair and deep, deep sorrow, hardened into something else. 

He didn’t know how he would make it out of this alive, for certainly it looked like he wouldn’t last the hour, but he swore as he lay dying on the scorched earth. He swore that he would change it all. Get rid of it all. No more gods. No more demons. Shinobi would decide their own fate. 

So thinking, he lay as Madara was betrayed from behind, and a Goddess was revived. Clinging to life against all odds, he lay as extraordinary shinobi went beyond time and space, and battled a goddess with the power of their bonds. 

And then suddenly he could breathe again.

Taking the deepest breath he had ever inhaled in his life, he relished the pain that spread anew through his body, because he knew he was alive to feel it. Just as suddenly, he could feel his arm again. He looked sideways, noting with pleasure that he could move his head, and his mouth dropped open in shock as he saw his arm, now made of some strange white flesh that flowed like liquid and yet felt as hard as muscle. He looked up in shock as he recognised the creature that was… pouring itself into him.

It was one of those things. Madara’s foot soldiers. A white zetsu. He spluttered, struggling to speak, but once again, found himself powerless to do anything as the enigmatic white creature flowed into his body, healing his wounds and giving him strength. Right there, Kaido decided. It would be better to die than live as a puppet of.. whatever this was.

Now that he could feel his arms again, he reached for a kunai, and struck at his own heart without hesitation, only to find his arm stop short of its own accord. He.. was not in control of his own limbs.  
“Eaasssyy there. I’m not here to hurt you”. He could hear the zetsu’s voice in his head. “G….Get out of my body, you miserable slime!”, he got out through gritted teeth, struggling against the being that had taken him over. 

“You should give up, you can’t win against me”, the zetsu said matter of factly, in its unnerving, singsong voice. Kaido’s will only burned brighter. He had already resolved never to do such a thing ever again. “I’ll….. die…. first”, he growled, moving his arm despite zetsu.

“My my, you’re quite strong willed, aren’t you?”, the creature replied, almost teasing. “Or perhaps you had to be, to stay alive for so long”. Kaido ignored its taunting, feeling with satisfaction the edge of the kunai touching his flesh. “Alright, that’s enough”, said the zetsu, a little bit of its arrogance gone. “Stop this, we can help each other. You want to get rid of Naruto and Sasuke, don’t you?”. 

Kaido froze. Did he? Naruto had kept them all alive, he could still feel the rush of his chakra flowing through him. And then he remembered how it felt lying there on the ground. Helpless. Abandoned. “No more gods. They all have to go”. Zetsu laughed lightly. “In that case, we are in agreement! You see, I want them gone quite badly too”. Kaido narrowed his eyes.

“You work for Madara”, he spat. “You’re no better than they are”. “Oh, Madara is done”, replied Zetsu, somewhat sadly. “I wanted him to win, yes, but he’s finished, and so is my original Mistress, the Lady Kaguya. They will defeat her shortly, and then all of us zetsu will die”. He looked up at Kaido. “Except for me that is, now that I am part of you!”, he said, smiling. Kaido resisted the urge to vomit.

“My”, continued zetsu. “Looking through your memories here, you were quite the accomplished little Cloud ninja weren’t you. I’m quite impressed. All this stuff about radio waves.. I don’t quite understand it, but I can see its potential for war”. Kaido scowled. “Stay out of my head you vile-”. “Oh, do cut it out with all the cursing and the fighting. We’re on the same side now. You need me to stay alive, and I can’t leave your body or I’ll die too”. 

That quietened Kaido. The man was a scientist. He couldn’t argue with logic. 

They both lay there in the silence as the sage of the sixpaths appeared and conversed with the tailed beasts and the deceased hokage. 

“We’d better get out of here before we’re discovered. If they find me alive they’ll most certainly try to kill me, and that means you’ll die too”. Kaido bit his lip. He hadn’t asked to be revived in this half-living fashion, but now that he had he wouldn’t complain. His drive to survive now was far too powerful, having already struggled all these past hours just to hang on.

Hesitantly, Kaido reached for his chakra, wondering how much would be left after the ten tails had sucked it all out of him. “Oh, and don’t look now, but the moon is a giant Rinne-Sharingan”, whispered Zetsu into his ear. “Wh- ”, he spluttered. “What??!?”. Zetsu giggled as he raised his head and stopped himself from looking up immediately. “I’m just toying with you, You can look at it without getting caught up in the jutsu now. The time of casting is long past”.

Cursing, Kaido looked. He stood there for a while, staring at the unearthly beauty and terror of the moon itself turned into a jutsu. Looking at the sheer scale of what these creatures were capable of, Kaido decided there. He would do whatever it took. Work alongside whomever he must, to get rid of them once and for all. 

He reached for his chakra, and found it not only replenished, but stronger than it used to be. Being half zetsu wasn’t half bad, he though to himself. Weaving handsigns quietly, he muttered. “Earth style, head hunter jutsu”, and vanished into the ground.

Hoping against hope that no one had seen them, Kaido ran deeper and deeper, away from the devastated battlefield, not knowing which direction to go, and so just going down. Further and further he went, not knowing what he’d do or where he’d go, now that he was a monster that every village would want dead. With no idea of how he could even begin to go about getting rid of the gods, or indeed, no idea of even where he’d reside now. 

As he dug deeper, the rage he had been bottling began to leak out. Tears filled his eyes as he remembered the broken voices of his comrades, calling out for some respite from the pain, the devastation that they had been powerless to stop. 

He recalled the defiant voices of the kage, urging them to run headlong into that slaughterhouse for the sake of that damned Naruto Uzumaki. The Kazekage’s face flashed in his head. “I want to protect my friend, and-”. He lashed out at the rock in anger, continuing to dig. Hypocrites! Damn hypocrites! He didn’t see them lying there next to him. He didn’t see them falling like pins while he and his comrades had. And now he was some bizarre half zetsu creature??

“You’re quite angry, aren’t you?”, zetsu said lightly. “SHUT UP!”, he yelled, pounding the rock below him and suddenly realising he had hit nothing. 

The echo of his voice lingered where he had been as its source fell. Kaido belatedly realised he had come upon some sort of cavern in the Earth, as he fell headlong into it. “Damn it all”. To come so far only to die now? But as he fell he began to see that it was not a natural cavern.

Walls and walls of scrolls and books whipped past him, built into different levels of the rock like a library. Like some sort of gigantic repository of knowledge. The cavern itself was stupendously huge. He couldn’t see the other side of it, nor could he see the ground, but he could see the side he was close to cut into floors and shelves, where all kinds of things were kept. 

As he fell, he fell past a floor that was full of containers of transparent jars filled with liquid. He couldn’t tell due to the speed at which he was falling, but it looked like there were… things suspended in the jars, like each was some sort of specimen container. He struggled to speak through the rushing wind. “What is this?”

*Oh, you don’t have to yell. I can read your thoughts*, replied zetsu in his mind. Frowning, Kaido continued.*What is this place?*. *This is one of our old hideouts, that Obito and I used in the days of the Akatsuki*. Kaido inhaled sharply. *You people.. made all of this?*. Zetsu chuckled. *Oh no, not all of it. Most of the stuff near the ground floor is our handiwork, and so was that floor of Uchiha eyeball specimens up there, but most of this was already here when we found this place*. *What??!?*

*Obito didn’t have the patience to look through all of it, but from what we could learn, apparently this library was one of the original stores of knowledge created by Ashura Otsusuki’s clan of Ninshu*. *WHAT?!? You learned that and you didn’t tear through every last book?*. *Oh, most of it was useless philosophical rambling about how to live and how a society should function and meaningless, idealistic blather. We didn’t have the time to peruse all that claptrap when we had tailed beasts to hunt. Perhaps Lord Madara might have, he always had a thing for ancient texts*, chuckled zetsu fondly. 

Kaido’s derision for Madara and his ilk grew even greater. They had had one of the original stores of knowledge sitting under them the whole time and they never took the time to even look through them?!? What an unforgivable waste of invaluable knowledge! He promised himself that he would give these tomes the reverence they deserved, if he ever made it out of this alive.

*You should probably brace yourself, the floor’s coming up rapidly*. Kaido had only a moment to look down and orient his feet before he hit the ground. 

His legs were entirely obliterated. The impact made a large mess of liquid and assorted ….. other things when he hit the ground. A lot of things that should not be outside the human body were scattered about the mess. Kaido belatedly realised that he couldn’t see at all from his left eye, or feel anything at all below his chest. And then the pain hit. 

The pain he felt was unimaginable, but only for a moment. As abruptly as he had felt the impact, the pain lessened and vanished altogether. He looked down in wonder as white tentacles of…. Zetsu reached out and scooped up the remains of everything that could still be salvaged, fusing with it and remaking it into something.. else.

He watched as his body knitted itself back together, as he was fundamentally changed from something that was human, to something that no longer was. As his entire lower half was reconstituted, he felt more than just that changing. His insides were being shuffled around somehow, and he felt not an ounce of pain from it. “This is a new trick, you know?”, said zetsu in an offhand manner. “I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this before Kabuto gave me Hashirama Senju’s cells from that stuff he extracted from Yamato of the leaf”. Kaido stood up hesitantly, testing the strength of his legs. “I still can’t see from my left eye”, he said dimly, feeling like he was in a dream.

“Ah yes, hold on”. With a brief and sudden bite of pain, his vision was restored. Walking forward through the mess of his own blood that surrounded him, Kaido moved slowly, unsure of how real the sensations he felt were. He held his arms out in front of him, noting that disturbingly, both were a mix of his skin and Zetsu’s…. whatever that was. 

“There’s a mirror over there behind that table with the scrolls on it next to that shelf of rolled up paper. Why don’t you go over there and tell me how good of a job I’ve done with your body, eh?”, said zetsu in a teasing tone. 

Still unsure that he wasn’t dreaming, Kaido took one step, and then another, relishing the strength he could feel in his legs as he walked. He only half registered the scrolls lying opened on the table he passed, or the assorted ninja tools hung on the walls, or the scribbled notes on the ground that he stepped on and left bloody footprints over. His footsteps raised clouds of dust that had lain dormant for months, some that had even lay dormant for thousands of years. 

In the dim light that streaked down from above, Kaido walked to the dust covered mirror, wiping away the dust on its surface, flinching back when he left a broad stain of blood on its surface instead. Shaking his head to drive away the feeling of surreality that surrounded everything, he tried again, using his cleaner forearms this time. As he it wiped away, he caught sight of his reflection and stopped.

Kaido looked like a ghost of himself. The entire lower half of his body was entirely zetsu, yet not entirely zetsu. The scientist in him couldn’t help but hypothesise. It was like the two had mixed together on a cellular level to become something.. else. 

Then he looked up. His skin remained similarly mottled all the way to his face. And his face. Kaido’s breath caught. His left eye had turned completely silver. His hair had turned completely silver as well. He looked ethereal, otherworldly. He looked just like… just like..

The image of Naruto Uzumaki flashed through his mind, golden eyed and golden haired, the color shining from within with an internal brilliance.

“AUGGHHHH”, he yelled, realising he resembled one of those creatures, one of those ‘gods’. 

Kaido fell to his knees, panting, and retched involuntarily. “There, there, take your time”, said Zetsu. “Shut up! Just-”. He retched once again. “Shut up!”. He stared at the ground, catching sight of his changed hands again. Was it worth living like this? Like some twisted abomination, with a voice in his head that would never leave?

Panting, he sat there in that position as the minutes passed, as extraordinary shinobi returned to their own world from times and spaces beyond. He sat there as Madara Uchiha bid his final farewell, and the reanimated hokage were allowed to return to their respite beyond life. He sat there as the last reincarnates of Yin and Yang realised that their disagreement was not yet at an end, and he finally moved once those two gods left for the Final Valley.

His breath began to slow, slowly, as he began to accept the reality of his situation. This was how it was. He was No Longer Human. Like a stray dog that had been left to live or die on its own, he was no longer a part of any village. He was not even a shinobi anymore, not really. He didn’t need to make any sort of ultra deduction to realise that there wasn’t a place for him in the world anymore. He raised his head defiantly. Fine. He didn’t need one anyway. He would live like this then, as a ghost in the dark. Until he could execute the goal he had set upon himself, as he had lain dying on a field of ants burned by a cruel god with a magnifying lens. 

He stood up, looking into the mirror once again, and Zetsu kept silent. Even he understood the importance of Kaido deciding what he would be from then on. Kaido continued to stare at the mirror, at his silver eye, at his silver hair, features that marked him out as clearly as Naruto’s flaming cloak or Sasuke’s crimson eyes . “Fine then. I will be one of them, in order to take them down. I will become one to ensure that there are no others”. 

He turned around and, for the first time, took note of the open scrolls on the table, the bloodied notes on the floor, and the shelves upon shelves of various things, set up on every wall. “Yes… I have been given this blessing for a reason”. He looked upwards, past the insidious work of Obito Uchiha, further upwards into the great and untouched literature from the time of Ninshu. His mind flashed back to the ideas and technologies he had been working on before the war. The incredible potential that radio waves held, and his research into the nature of chakra. Slowly, his despair began to lift, and he smiled. And zetsu’s mind was at rest. He knew then that his job was done, and Kaido would be his, forever. 

“With this knowledge and my genius, we will get rid of them all. Gods, kage, all of them”. Zetsu exclaimed with joy. “Excellent! I must admit, Kaido, I did not know what a clever little ninja you were when I merged with you, but I am glad my choice turned out to be such an excellent one”. Kaido nodded, his face determined, and sneezed at the clouds of dust the motion had disturbed.

Coughing, he waved his hand in front of his face. “This place is filled with so much dust it may as well be ash”. He looked up once more at the tomes of writing far, far above, where he had broken through the bedrock of the ceiling. “This is where we’ll make our stronghold. From this ash filled place we will rise like a phoenix, and burn that cruel world that left us to choke” 

“You won’t regret saving my life. I swear it by everything I hold dear, be it weeks, months or even years. I will destroy them all”. His eyes hardened. “This world has had enough of gods”. 

He walked up to the table and took up a scroll, beginning to read through it. His eyes began to widen as he read what he realised was a detailed analysis on how Hashirama Senju's cells functioned, and how they could be used for cellular regeneration. 

“Oh, and zetsu. Don’t call me Kaido, ever again. Kaido of the hidden Cloud is dead. He died in the war, when you found me. I have been reborn as one of them, as a god. From now on, my name, is Kazuma”.

.

Far, far above, Hagoromo Otsusuki looked below and gave a quiet little sigh of grief and resignation. His beloved children fought to the death in the Valley of End as a quiet and determined new evil took root beneath their feet.  
He could already see how this would end.


	8. Defeat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Attempting to squeeze everything into one chapter was foolish. It just ended up making the chapter bloated, and it isn't even done. Anyways, sorry for the delay. November was insane and I couldn't cope with any of it. The next chapter should be the last for sure. Dunno how many times I've said that already. I'm sorry for all the spelling errors and stuff, I haven't really had time to proofread much. Anyways,

Progress Log Alpha zero one. The wind waves wildly over the waves. The wind waves wildly over the waves. The- oh do shut up zetsu, stop laughing. It’s just a test phrase. Oh. Well, that should be enough. Commence playback.

.

Progress Log Alpha zero two. Alpha zero one was a resounding success. It is possible to encode information into chakra for efficient storage in a similar manner in which it is encoded into electricity. The hypothesis I developed while still a cloud ninja has proved to be on the mark. All that remains is to- what? 

….. You interrupted my experimentation to tell me that? Honestly, couldn’t you run off somewhere and play like a good boy till I’m done with my work? How did the Akatsuki put up with your inane chatter?

What? Oh. Yes, I suppose they didn’t have you directly plugged into their brains. Whatever, stop thinking, I’m trying to record my findings here.

Ahem. As I was saying, the possibilities for data storage efficiency is limitless, and…..

.

Kazuma’s fingers flew over his control console with the speed of a man possessed. By ambition or madness, none could say, as he brought up screen after screen of various happenings across the Hidden Ash.

Behind him only a single guard stood to attention, as the other swept the hallway outside of the remains of the shinobi formerly known as Kai.

Kazuma stopped short on one of the screens, seemingly thrown. Enlarging it, he turned on the distinctive thermal filter, examining the screen carefully. An orange silhouette bloomed into existence at the center of the dark blue image, before vanishing just as suddenly

If Kazuma had been drinking anything at the time he would have most certainly spat it out. Fortunately for him, he had ceased to require food or water from the day he had become more zetsu than human.  
The only things that flew from his mouth were profanities and spittle, and most recently, fire style ninjutsu.

“HE CAN TELEPORT???”. He frantically brought up other screens as Sasuke Uchiha blipped in and out of existence, moving along the length of the entry tunnel Kitetsu had opened with unnatural speed. Kazuma sat down and rubbed his eyes. Of course he could teleport. Why not. 

Double checking, Kazuma slowed down the playback and checked each individual frame. Eyes narrowed, he stared the screen, disbelieving. “Alright. Alright Alright Alright Alright”. He took a deep breath as he stood up and turned around. His guard had vanished. Kazuma swore and made as if to strike the wall before freezing a second before his fist connected. 

Swearing again, he turned back to his screens. Arms clasped behind his back. “It’s alright. I am myself again. You need not fear”. Hesitantly, his bodyguard re emerged from behind the full length mirror where he had been cowering. “Fine”, though Kazuma to himself. “So he can teleport. It changes nothing. Once I have him where I want him he could be the sage of sixpaths himself and he’d still lose”. 

Kazuma nodded, seemingly reassuring himself more than anyone else. A sudden rush of motion on one of the camera feeds caught his eye. He smiled as he saw that Mizuki and his partner had been discovered. 

Kazuma pondered his course of action. He could let his forces take out Mizuki and- no. That wouldn’t work. Mizuki was a wild card here. He knew nothing of his capabilities or skill. 

He had been caught off guard once already, not knowing that the man possessed the chakra of all nine beasts, and then once more by the fact that Sasuke Uchiha possessed space time ninjutsu that seemed to be as effective as the Yellow Flash’s. He would not be caught off guard again.

From here on out, he would force them to fight on his terms. He looked back up and noted suddenly that Mizuki’s partner was no longer standing by him. Frantically rewinding the feed, he paused as Mizuki… summoned something? And sent it and his partner over the edge of the plateau.  
Kazuma gave a short, sharp laugh. Fool. Apart from the celestial duo themselves there was no shinobi alive who had a chance in hell of taking down his partner. Oh well. Zetsu would get to have some fun for once.

Pressing buttons on his arm computer, Kazuma paused as a signal was sent and received. “Hello? Ah yes, zetsu my friend, you’ve got incoming. Oh? You’ve already engaged. Marvellous. I do have a favour to ask though. Please leave the body as intact as you can. I absolutely must perform a post mortem investigation. Mizuki would never ally with anyone that wasn’t at least some use.”

He paused as the person on the other end of the line replied, and laughed out loud, wiping a tear from his silver eye. “Oh, that is funny. Do me a favour and record the footage so I can watch it later for my amusement. And don’t waste too much time. I know you haven’t ‘played’ in a while, but I must remind you we’re moving out in less than five hours. Yes” 

He paused once again, listening. “Alright. Yes, you needn’t worry about Mizuki or Uchiha”. He looked back at the screen. Mizuki seemed to be doing remarkably well against his forces. “I’m heading topside now to deal with Mizuki. I’m certain Uchiha will sit back and do nothing. I know exactly how he thinks, the overconfident idiot. He’s certain to fall right into my trap”.

Ending the call, Kazuma turned without another word, and walked back, past the line of cells.

He grinned with anticipation. So close. Hours now. Not years any longer, not even weeks. He brought up the feeds on his arm computer once again as he walked, and noted with alarm that while his men seemed to have the good sense to not go completely ballistic while so close to the village, several of his shinobi seemed to have activated their tailed beast cloaks. 

He grimaced. Idiots. Their control over the beasts was tenuous at best. He couldn’t have them going feral so close to the base. He began to walk faster, typing commands into his arm computer, and felt the rush of carefully moulded chakra flowing through his body.

He focused, calling up his memories of the necessary hand signs, and weaved them without hesitation, once again appreciating the incredible genius of Tobirama Senju, and vanished. 

His two bodyguards, who had followed him out frantically, stopped as he disappeared, and sighed in relief, panting from the exhaustion of trying to keep up with him. They both knew how important he was to the plan, and they would both die for him in an instant, but both of them were also secretly relived to be out of his presence. It wasn’t like the man really needed bodyguards to begin with. 

.

Progress report Zeta zero one

We have a long road ahead of us if we are to ever even dream of defeating the likes of Naruto Uzumaki or Sasuke Uchiha. No ordinary shinobi would stand a chance, and it now seems a good thing that fate has turned me into the very antithesis of ordinary

Of course, my genius set me apart long before that happened, but I am certain that both these factors will prove invaluable in my eventual victory

Our first order of business is converting this dusty, ancient pit into a functional base of operations.  
Fortunately, I am not starting from scratch.

The equipment already available in this cavern is not insignificant, thanks to the efforts of, I’m told, Obito Uchiha. Though somewhat rudimentary, the tools necessary for the research, study and modification of the human body are here and operational.

As a consequence we will not have to waste time while we assemble our larger scale laboratory. I can begin my line of experimentation while the assembly takes place. 

There is much to be done if we ever are to reach our goal. But I am patient and willing to do whatever it takes to achieve it, and so achieve it we must.

It has not been by any means easy, but over the last few weeks, zetsu and I have managed to procure the infrastructure to construct the beginnings of a lab. Bio-engineering was never my specialty, but there is much to learn here from the research of Kabuto Yakushi and the akatsuki. 

Perhaps by the time the lab is fully set up I shall be more of an expert on the subject than even Orochimaru.

Ensuring an uninterrupted supply of electricity to the lab is a hurdle that will need to be overcome if this project is to move forward. For now we use lightning style ninjutsu to power the batteries and store energy, but that is not a sustainable long term solution. 

It is unfortunate that my radio wave experimentation apparatus is lost to us; it is far too noticeable and well known in the cloud for its disappearance to go unnoticed. However I am fairly confident in my ability to recreate the array. It will obviously take a good while to properly put together. 

Zetsu’s abilities are absolutely invaluable. It is incredibly freeing not to require sleep or sustenence. Zetsu subists off the earth itself somehow, even he doesn’t seem to fully understand the process.

Whatever.

As long as it allows me to function at maximum efficiency in this manner, I need not understand its exact mechanics. 

.

As the hordes of hidden ash shinobi drew closer, Naruto Uzumaki could almost feel the ghost of a presence dearer to him than his own life. And then a rock hit him on the back of his head. 

“Ow!”

He rubbed the point of impact, annoyed, but didn’t have time for much else. Kazuma’s army was converging upon him, leaping and running from the raised plateau of the ash village to the tunnel entryway where he stood. He had seconds before they would be upon him.

Naruto didn’t have much time to strategise. Was taking on this entire group a good idea? Would it give away his cover? Was it already given away? Could he manage such a brawl without resorting to the rasengan or any of his jutsu? Would he have to rely entirely on taijutsu here?

Naruto swore internally and wished he had taken a second to ask Sakura if taking on the entire village was a good idea. Long term strategy was not his thing, he preferred to think about how to win a fight rather than whether it was wise to fight one

Whatever. It wasn’t exactly like could give them the slip now.

Raising his fists, he struck decisively at the first shinobi who came in range, alert and aware of the four others approaching him from every other direction. Trying his best to keep his taijutsu as neutral and devoid of flair as possible, he began to smoothly fend off wave after wave of assailants.

Naruto was relying on the fact that none of them would try to use any large scale ninjutsu this close to their own home base, and as they continued to attack his hypothesis(Though Naruto would never use that word) was proved right. These shinobi were restricting themselves to taijutsu as well. But why weren’t any of them using any sort of close combat ninjutsu? 

Naruto regretted thinking such a thing immediately as he saw the distinctive dark red of a tailed beast chakra cloak begin to form around several of the shinobi who hadn’t engaged yet. Brilliant.

Out of the corner of his eye Naruto caught the motion of the doors of the largest building opening. 

Still battling furiously, the rhythm of block, evade, punch, evade, kick, evade, began to fade into comfortable background noise, the motion of battle so familiar to him. 

The whirlwind of movement turned into a colorful blur as Naruto, incredibly, began to doze off. A smooth voice echoed from the stalagmites, snapping him back to attention. 

Struggling to keep his eyes open, Naruto heard the words as clearly as everyone else

“Mizuki of the Hidden leaf!”  
.

As he crawled slowly along the ceiling, something Kazuma had said finally filtered into Sasuke’s head. “You who hold some of the power of all nine tailed beasts within you..”. Sasuke froze. He had been so focused on Kazuma and Mizuki that he hadn’t been entirely listening to what they had been talking about. The tailed beasts?? All of them? What??

Sasuke had done his research over the past week. He knew that Kazuma had bits and pieces of all nine hidden away somewhere, presumably in his chakra transmission/production facility where he kept all his other chakra batteries. The one that was guarded by his extremely annoying partner, the one who made infiltration impossible.

He knew that Kazuma had created many such imperfect jinchuuriki of his shinobi, using the chakra transmission method that was unique to his organisation. But what was that he had said about Mizuki?? He possessed the chakra of all nine? Sasuke was flabbergasted. 

How could such a thing have conspired without his knowing the slightest thing about it? Moreover, their interaction just now made it clear that Mizuki was not affiliated with Kazuma, unless they were playing out the whole drama for Sasuke’s sole benefit, which he highly doubted.

Kazuma began to walk towards Mizuki as Sasuke sat there, thinking. He finally arrived at the conclusion that it must have been happening during his more.. misguided years. When he had been with Orochimaru, or perhaps even after that time, during his Hebi or Taka days.

The fact of the matter remained that he had been pretty ignorant of the rest of the world until after the war, when he left to explore it. There were any number of things that could have happened in the meantime without his knowledge. 

Still, to search long and hard enough to find pieces of all of them, and even further, to use them on himself? Was the man completely insane? Was he attempting to recreate some reduced version of the ten tails? And more importantly, how on Earth did he manage it without alerting Naruto to the fact?

Naruto possessed that chakra too, and definitely far more of it than Mizuki did. Moreover, he shared a friendly relationship with all the tailed beasts. Wouldn’t they inform him of it if someone was hoarding their chakra?

Sasuke paused. Or perhaps even they didn’t know what occurred to the various parts of themselves. After all, half the Nine tails had sat inside the belly of the Reaper for a good number of years. And he didn’t recall any of the jichuuriki being aware of others made using the same beast. Which did explain Mizuki going undetected by Naruto to some extent. 

Sasuke took a deep breath. 

First Kitetsu dying before he could get to him, just like all the others, and then Chojuro convinced that Sasuke had killed the man, and then Mizuki showing up out of the blue, a jinchuuriki of every tailed beast no less, and to take the cake, Kazuma finally revealing himself. 

Sasuke felt like he had lived a week in the span of a few hours.

Oh for the good old days when the most eventful thing to happen in a day would be a battle to the death with Naruto. 

It was only a few more hours to midnight, which gave Sasuke an almost vanishingly small window to destroy Kazuma and his chakra transmission facility, and then delay his entire army long enough for the plan he had communicated to Kakashi and the others to be executed.

He hadn’t received any reply from the five Kage or Shikamaru, but he shrugged off those misgivings. Surely they were aware of his plan and ready to mobilise. If they weren’t, there was only one last resort option available to Sasuke to ensure the safety of the villages of and the world.

Sasuke didn’t want to, but if he had to choose between the safety of his comrades and the lives of these fools who had given themselves over to Kazuma, he would choose his comrades every time. Sasuke knew that sometimes taking lives was a necessity, but even he did not look forward to having to massacre every last one of the shinobi below him. 

He hoped with all his heart that the five Kage were moving according to plan. 

Watching the crowd of below make way for their leader’s overly dramatic approach, Sasuke realised that one way or another he would have to wait out this fight. Here was an opportunity to let two problems solve themselves, and maybe provide him with a window to do it himself, if one such arrived. 

Alert and ready, blade drawn, Sasuke waited silently on his wall, a spider sizing up two quarreling dragonflies, both unaware of the true danger they faced.

.

Progress log Beta zero three. Zero two was a resounding success, and we now have a reliable way to store and grow samples of Hashirama Senju’s DNA. While not self sustaining, it is possible to artificially keep the samples alive.

Further examination is astounding. It’s as if his cells possess extraordinary potential for differentiation. As if they were somehow ALL stem cells. It must have something to do with the constant flux of chakra they’re exposed to.

This merits further research.

Obito Uchiha, and further still, Kabuto Yakushi’s research has proven invaluable. Though written in cipher it was decipherable in the end, though I credit my own genius for that feat .

The extent of the information those two recorded and kept about their endeavours, the abilities of the tailed beasts they hunted, and especially about the rest of the akatsuki, who were all freaks of nature on their own, is vast indeed. I am slowly beginning to understand what the Uchiha did all those years he was preparing for war.

Credit where credit is due, I would not have access to most of this without Zetsu’s directions to the locations of their other hideouts. This new body of mine gives me a marvellous facility to travel through the earth itself, making covering large distances very easy.

The stores of knowledge and samples we found and collected across their various facilities were nothing less than treasure. We have a lot of material to work with, but not the resources to run a proper facility ourselves. Not yet anyway

Unfortunately we were not able to get them all. Kabuto Yakushi had beaten us to some of the hideouts, destroying or secreting away all the data of note studied there. 

It is even possible that we may have been spotted by lookouts he left within the facilities he secured before we could, but that is of no consequence now. All he would see is a ghost flitting in the darkness. 

.

Progress report Zeta zero two

Construction of the lab is coming along well. Most of the apparatus I will need has been set up, and those we took them from are none the wiser. Everyone is still too shell shocked from the after effects of the Great War to sit and take stock of how many test tubes have gone missing.

The more machinery we install, the more urgent the need for a central power supply becomes. Keeping bio-samples alive indefinitely is not something we can do without electricity. I shall have to increase the priority of solving the energy issue.

The battlefield itself is a wealth of bio materials and deceased shinobi. The amount we can learn about the jutsu and techniques of the other hidden villages from these corpses is substantial. A veritable gold mine of information.

Zetsu and I have harvested as many samples as we can. Storage is a bit of an issue in this dank, dusty, place, but thanks to zetsu I can just turn off my sense of smell, which saves time.

I have begun perusing the texts of Ninshu that have been stored in the older alcoves of this ancient place, and though profoundly interesting conceptually, Zetsu’s assessment of them was correct in the fact that they seem to have no practical application in terms of fulfilling my goal.

I will persist in reading every last one. However, perhaps I shall do so later, once our more immediate goals have been met 

.

The shinobi beseiging Naruto on every side had stepped back as the silver haired man walked towards him, yelling about something or the other. Naruto had a sense in the back of his mind telling him that it was vitally important that he pay attention to the silver haired man’s words, but in practice he was simply too tired to listen or care about someone’s grandstanding.

The man began to blur as Naruto’s eyes slid out of focus, and he had a small but sweet flashback of listening to Kakashi drone on about something or the other, the light glinting off the man’s unnaturally shiny silver hair vaguely reminding him of his sensei’s more normal hairstyle.

Suddenly realising that the silver haired man had stopped talking, Naruto jerked back up to attention and looked around, as alert as he could make himself be. Everyone was staring expectantly at him, as if waiting for him to do something. Naruto was puzzled. It was not a new feeling. Did they expect him to speak? 

Naruto wasn’t great at giving pretentious speeches. 

(Even as that thought went through his mind, Obito Uchiha, Nagato Uzumaki and Zabuza Momochi in the other world, all gave a collective cry of justified outrage, and even Sasuke Uchiha, sitting quietly on the ceiling, felt an odd spasm of displaced anger. 

To be fair however, it wasn’t their fault that the foremost practitioner of the talk no jutsu wasn’t consciously aware of his ability to use it. Much like most of Naruto’s actions, it was something he did spontaenously)

Seized by an uncharacteristic stage fright, Naruto could feel the gazes of all the assembled shinobi around him and the silver haired man, boring into him, expecting him to do something. “Uh..”. His mouth was dry as he opened it. His mind frantically ran through things to say, desperately looking for something, anything, to break the awkward silence while keeping his cover intact.

Naruto opened his mouth. “Hello!”, he said with a confidence he did not feel. Then he shut his mouth once more, not having planned anything further than that. The shinobi staring at him continued to do so, as Kazuma blinked. Naruto wanted to vanish somewhere else, be anywhere but there. It was so unbearably awkward.

“Naruto”, said a voice in his head, and with an internal cry of relief he let it take over. “LORD KAZUMA!”, said Kurama using Naruto’s vocal chords, as Naruto took a backseat in his own body, beyond relieved to be able to do so.

Kurama’s voice came out as Naruto’s, or rather, Kurama’s approximation of Mizuki’s. However it became immediately apparent that Kurama did not have much practice with vocal chords in general, as his voice came out loud enough to shake the nearest stalagmite.

“OW ow ow ow Kurama!”, yelled Naruto internally. Kurama gruffly brushed the reprimand aside. “I’ve gotten the hang of it now”. The audience however, seemed suitably awestruck by Naruto’s boomed challenge. 

Kurama continued. “You are this Kazuma we have heard so much about, then?”. So saying, he began to walk slowly towards Kazuma, and away from the crowd of shinobi surrounding him.

Kazuma grinned at being recognised. “I see my reputation seems to have preceded me. You know who I am and still do not back down. Ha! You are a foolish one”.

The two advanced toward each other step by step, as Kurama attempted to hand control back to Naruto.

As Kurama relenquished control, Naruto’s body sagged and would have slumped to the ground if Kurama had not jumped back in frantically. “Naruto! What are you doing?!”. There was no response.

Kurama looked into their shared mindscape desperately, to see Naruto gently snoring within. “Naruto! NARUTO! WAKE UP! Kazuma is upon us!”. Blearily, Naruto opened an eye. “Wh- …………. wha?”

Kazuma had paused his advance abruptly when Naruto had suddenly wobbled, and waited a distance away from him, cautious for any sudden movements. 

“Naruto”, hissed Kurama furiously. “It’s happening right now! Everything this mission was building towards, the whole reason you were chosen for it, all the battle and subterfuge so far! It was all for this! Kazuma is right in front of you! You have the chance to take him down for good! SO WAKE. UP!!!!!!!”, yelled Kurama with all of his considerable might, and the wave of mental sound threw Naruto off his cozy resting spot, forcing his eyes open once more 

In the real world, Kazuma began to approach once more, wary, and Mizuki suddenly slumped as Naruto was thrust back into control. Kazuma halted once again, a kunai in his hand at the ready, and the watching crowd of shinobi collectively inhaled as Naruto’s head drooped forward, facing the floor. Arms swinging like a pendulum, Naruto swayed from side to side, barely aware of the world around him, struggling to maintain his balance.

The watching shinobi followed his movements, hypnotised by their seemingly deliberate intent.

Kazuma’s mind raced.

What was this? What was that fool doing? Kazuma had anticipated some quick, bloody action, a short but glorious battle to raise the morale and bloodlust of his troops. Some flashy ninjutsu, some skilled taijutsu, and a decisive victory for Kazuma. Instead, Mizuki was just… standing there and swaying from side to side.

Kazuma hated unknown variables. He tensed his knees, ready to spring, internally cursing the incomprehensibility of his opponents strategy. He had never seen anything like it, not in all his years of research and travel. He tensed once again as Mizuki seemingly nearly fell over, but caught himself just in time as Mizuki did the same

Kazuma cursed once again. It wasn’t that he was afraid. It was more the sheer strangeness and… total lack of information he had about his opponent’s intentions. That was what frightened him. 

He had spent the last few years of his life accumulating a database of information unrivaled in all the world. He knew how chakra worked better than anyone save the sage of the sixpaths maybe, had analysed every fighting style and every jutsu. But what on earth was this?

Biting his lip, he realised that standing around waiting for Mizuki to make the first move was making him look bad. Already, whispers were moving among his followers, wondering why their all powerful lord hesitated.

Coming to a decision, Kazuma focused and his kunai began to crackle with lighting. Decisively moving, like a leader should, he told himself, he charged straight at the unsteady Mizuki.  
.

Progress log alpha zero five. The similarities continue to astound. Chakra is most definitely a form of energy like electricity or gravity or light. It can be generated, transmitted and stored by the human body. Therefore it stands to reason, there must exist methods to replicate all that artificially.

The generation of chakra continues to baffle, involving a unique interaction between mental focus and physical ability. Natural chakra most definitely flows without conscious mental direction, and yet it proves immune to all forms of manipulation other than mental direction. This makes no sense whatsoever.

Although vital for a body’s continued functioning, it doesn’t seem to so much cause good health as… exist as a consequence of it?

Clearly though, this relationship can be reversed, else medical ninjutsu would not exist.

Even chakra must follow laws. Like water that always flows from a higher to a lower area, there must be rules that govern its behaviour. It makes no sense that it only responds to mental focus. 

Today’s test constitutes an attempt to store chakra artificially, as its artificial generation outside the human body continues to defy research. 

Using the principles of storing electricity, we will be using a preserved sample of Hashirama cells, into which a fixed amount of chakra will be channeled.

Experiments along this line were deemed too risky by me up until this point. Toying with the wood style is a recipe for unlooked for disaster. However we lack time and resources and must make do with what we have as quickly as we can. 

Commencing- What did I tell you about interrupting me during these logs? Oh. Yes that does look like you, zetsu, because it is you. It’s a clone. Or at least, an attempt at one. Dont’t act so surprised, it’s been growing there for almost a month now.

Yes yes I know I can’t make any more, and all of you were victims of the original Tsukuyomi, and I can’t make minds to fill in new zetsu with. But I do have an idea. You’re not planning on squatting in my body forever, are you?

Anyhow, commencing chakra storage test  
.

Naruto was dimly aware of sitting on a grassy hill where giant toads swam through the clouds. “Whoooaaaaaaaaaaa”, he mumbled as he heard a distant, yet familiar voice yell at him. “K…. Kurama?”, he asked, as his field of vision suddenly jerked and he found himself looking at a rapidly approaching floor.

Naruto caught himself just before he fell, standing erect once again, and looked up. A shiny silver blur approached Naruto, something even shinier in his right hand. Naruto’s face broke into a lazy grin. “Shinyyyyyy” he said, as he reached out for the bright thing

.

Kazuma’s kunai moved with a purposeful power, sweeping downwards towards the witless shinobi before him. Then, just as the crackling blade was about to pierce into the shinobi’s chest, his opponent…. Reached out towards it.

Quick as a flash, Kazuma jumped out of reach, putting distance between them with a single fluid bound. It was just as he expected. The strange stance, the wobbling. It had been some sort of trap to lure him in all along. He didn’t understand what sort of ploy it was, but he was certain he had just foiled it. 

It was just unlucky for Mizuki that he happened to be up against possibly the smartest shinobi in the world save maybe Orochimaru, one that had been on guard for exactly that sort of trap from the very beginning. Kazuma smirked. 

Mizuki was finally proving somewhat predictable.  
“You’ll have to move faster than that if you hope to keep up with me!”, he taunted, enjoying the feeling of superiority.

.

Naruto blinked. The shiny blur had receeded. He heard an urgent, insistent voice yelling something in his head, but he ignored it. The shiny thing was still in his field of view, it was just blurrier now. Shiny… 

An image swam into his mind of Kakashi eating ramen. Shoulders hunched, Kakashi dug into the bowl in front of him, his back turned to Naruto. “Kakashi sensei!”, said Naruto happily, walking towards the man. Somehow, Kakashi seemed exactly as far away as he had been before Naruto had begun walking.

“Kakashi sensei!”, he yelled, upping his pace. Kakashi continued to retreat into the distance, slurping down ramen with his back turned to Naruto. “Hey! Kakashi sensei! No fair! Save some for me!!”, he yelled, running proper now.

.

Kazuma froze as Mizuki began moving, the echo of his shouted taunt still ringing. Mizuki was walking towards him now, his…. His eyes closed? What. For the third time that day, Kazuma was unnerved. 

What exactly was the man doing? Was he trying to intimidate him? Well, Kazuma had seen hell with his own eyes and come out stronger.

He readied his blade and readied himself. He would not be intimidated by the likes of …. As he continued to think, Mizuki’s pace suddenly doubled, the man now jogging towards him. 

A strange, empty grin stretched across his face, and drool fell from his open mouth as he ran. Kazuma gulped. Alright, he was intimidated. What the hell was going on?

He thought watching Mizuki fight using his cameras had given him a pretty good idea of his fighting style. Apparently he had been entirely wrong. Something was very badly… off, about Mizuki. 

He couldn’t say exactly what, and the thought terrified him. As it was, the man possessed the chakra of all nine… Had he been driven entirely insane by it?? But according to Kitetsu’s report he had been sane enough earlier. 

One thing was more certain than ever. Underestimating him would be his downfall. 

Mizuki broke into an all out sprint, his arms held out before him, his smile unnaturally wide.

Unnerved beyond belief, Kazuma jumped out of the way, with no thought for anything other than his immediate safety. He was used to hard, calculating foes and merciless, vengeful gods. 

This strange, smiling, drooling man with the power of nine gods was unlike anyone he had ever faced before.  
Frustrated and…. Could it be? 

Yes, Kazuma was frightened, afraid of this unfathomable, heedless style of battle that had betrayed nothing of the man’s capabilities, save that he was so confident in his strategy that he seemed to fear nothing, despite knowing who he was up against. 

Even his manner of speaking had unnerved him. His strange and random “Hello”, followed by what appeared to be an entirely different timbre of voice. It was unsettling. 

Kazuma shook his head. No! He was Lord Kazuma, blessed by fate and genius! He did not back down! Kazuma decided it was time to stop testing the waters, and to battle for real.

.

Progress log Alpha one five. My hypothesis of a particle that causes the phenomenon of chakra through its movement appears… flawed. The energy equivalence does not hold in any of the experiments. The temperature of the fire of a fireball jutsu does not seem to be proportionate to the amount of chakra used, but rather the will of the user. 

Instead, the volume and size of the fireball seems to depend on the original amount of chakra. There is still an unaccounted for loss of energy. This is unacceptable. There must be somewhere this energy comes from.

Perhaps people wiser than I have already asked this question. Hmm.  
Perhaps I shall ask them 

.

Progress log Gamma zero two

It is impossible to understate the momentousness of the information revealed to us by The Second Hokage. Everything has changed.

Chakra, apparently, is the energy that connects this world to the next. It is the very dimensional energy that separates the worlds and moves between them. This is how and why it is able to manifest into fire, water, lightning, earth, or any number of other things. It is not dissimilar to light or zero point energy in its manner of existence. 

The phenomenon of sentience in living beings is apparently also something that is intrinsically linked to chakra and its existence. The mechanism of brain waves and their fluctuations have astounding similarities to chakra, which is why chakra responds so naturally to mental control.

Chakra is as necessary to the mechanism of life as electricity in the brain or combustion in the cells. 

The Second Hokage is of the belief that while every human body contains an intrinsic amount of chakra, much like every living being, the ability to manipulate it was gifted to us by the sage of the sixpaths, raising us onto a higher level of consciousness by sharing his chakra with us, awakening our own chakra networks, which till then had operated subconsciously, like breathing. 

It permeates everything, from the ground to the sky, and inundates everything, intermingling our world with the other one, the source of all chakra.

I asked the Second why it would not be possible then, to find a mechanism to draw the ambient chakra of the world into a shinobi, and thus theoretically create a warrior with access to infinte chakra.

His answer astounded me. Such techniques had apparently already been developed and used for years, mostly by the ninja animals of the hidden clans, and was what they called the ‘sage mode’. Apparently it was possible for a shinobi to learn these methods and gain infinite power in this fashion.

Further, he revealed to me that several of the leaf’s most prolific shinobi, the First Hokage and the Fourth, and even Naruto Uzumaki himself, were already familiar with the technique.

Learning things like these helps me understand how the Hidden Leaf has always been ahead of every other village for all these years. At first I was frustrated, but I realised this to be a short sighted and unproductive reaction. It is more important that I learn of all these techniques now, while I still have the element of surprise on my side.

It is clear the Hokage of the past hold great knowledge. I must learn as much from them as I can.

.  
Progress log Gamma one seven

It has not been easy procuring any sort of samples from the wreckage of utter destruction that was once the command center of the Allied Shinobi Forces, but the transmission of chakra continues to be one of the most promising avenues of empowering shinobi without all that mucking about with body modification, and so no expense has been spared.

Every soldier on the battlefield was made privy to the Yamanaka clan’s incredible mental transmission jutsu that coordinated the Allied Force’s jutsu against the ten tails. The transmission jutsu, I believe, must by its very narture contain a great deal of information about the transmission of chakra via radiation, and therefore Inoichi Yamanaka could prove to be a goldmine of information as valuable as the Second Hokage.

The only difficulty was in salvaging enough bio material to extract dna from.

With zetsu’s invaluable assistance, several samples have been extracted, but we still have no idea who they belong to. This will be a lengthy process of trial and error.

Let it not be said that our magnificent victory was wrought without effort.

Let the reanimation trials begin. 

.

Kurama was unimaginably old, older than all people living and older than most of the dead ones too. Since the beginning of the elder days and his creation by the Old Man Sixpaths, Kurama had seen many many things, both incredible and terrifying. There were not many whose experiences could be said to be anywhere near as colorful or vast as his.

He had felt the devastating power of the First Hokage’s 1000 armed kan’on firsthand, had destroyed more habitations and killed more people than he cared to recall, had been encased in the perfect Susanoo’ of Madara Uchiha, had felt the remorseless, unfeeling chakra of the ten tails, and had been split into two and sealed into the Reaper itself by the Fourth Hokage. 

He had been eaten from the inside out by the Silver and Gold of the cloud, such was the breadth and vast, vast depth of his experiences, and somehow, in all those centuries, the day he was currently experiencing was the most stressful one yet. 

Kurama was not very familiar with the feeling of ‘stress’. Most of the time all he felt was rage, and hate. At least before meeting Naruto. The boy had changed his outlook and perception of the world, showing him that there was so much more to it than just unfeeling anger and blind violence. Naruto had risen above the limits of his kind, and had staked his soul on his beliefs. 

Naruto had taught Kurama the meaning of first, trust, and then friendship, joy, and then companionship. Today however, he was teaching Kurama a whole lot about the meaning of stress. If Sasuke Uchiha had been aware, he would have empathised.

“NARUTO! WAKE UP DAMN YOU!” yelled Kurama, frantically trying to get the dunderhead to open his eyes. 

Naruto tottered about, lost in (ironically) a world of dreams, a little tsukuyomi of his own making. “NAAAAARUTOOOOOOO!!!!!!” he yelled, as Kazuma began to run parallel to Naruto, his hands weaving signs at a blinding speed. 

Naruto continued to run recklessly, before suddenly stopping and pivoting to his right.

Unfazed, Kazuma kept up with his sudden change in direction, making a final hand sign.

.

Naruto was having a blast. A toad that had Sasuke’s face was hopping around looking absolutely serious, like Sasuke would. “Bwahahahahahaha!”, went Naruto, bursting into uncontrollable laughter. No way Sasuke thought he looked anything other than hilarious like that. Sasuke continued to stare at him, completely serious.

Naruto tried to hold it in, but failed once again, as the chuckles began to leak out once more.

Miffed, the Sasuke toad hopped away as Naruto ran after him. “No! Come back! I’m sorry!”, he yelled as he ran after the toad

. 

Kazuma readied his chakra, his hands coming together decisively, as he said “Multi Shadow Clone jutsu!”. There was a massive burst of chakra smoke that enveloped the whole clearing in a column, as all the shinobi within either struggled to see, or peered easily through it using visual jutsu, or in one case, burst into peals of uncontrolled laughter.

There was no wind to clear away the fog in that stagnant, ash filled place, but it is the nature of chakra fog to dissipate unless it is continuously maintained, and dissipate it did.

The tower of fog melted away to reveal an organised, regimented army of Kazumas. They all stood shoulder to shoulder, two ranks of them, forming a neat human barrier opposite to Naruto. Who was still laughing.

Nobody moved as the last of the fog vanished, the dusty arena still echoing with the sounds of unnatural laughter. All the Kazumas appeared visibly nervous. Steeling himself, the leader stepped forward. “Rank Alpha! Attack”, he yelled, almost succeeding in keeping the tremor out of his voice. 

The front row of Kazumas walked forward a step, and opened their mouths.

.

Kurama was at his wits’ end. Naruto seemed insistent on staying happily in dreamland while the person they had been seeking all this while, a person whose abilities and powers were still unknown, seemed bent on destroying them both and making a show out of it in the process.

Even now, the front row of Kazumas were weaving a series of handsigns, doubtless a precursor to some devious jutsu. 

Naruto meanwhile, was making out with a rock. “Oh Sakura, I couldn’t, It just wouldn’t… no, haha, stop it you..”, he mumbled, delirious.

Kurama pulled at his fur, utterly frustrated. He had tried taking control of Naruto’s body, but Naruto seemed to be somehow actively resisting it in his sleep. No amount of yelling or cajoling seemed to be having any effect.

There was no more time for messing around. It was do or die time. Naruto needed to be woken up, regardless of the cost. 

It had been a long, long time since Kurama had intentionally tried to hurt Naruto with his chakra, and the thought pained him even as it occurred, but he knew he had no time to look for alternatives. Uncomfortable with what he had to do, Kurama did it nonetheless, his chakra going from benign to malicious, burning Naruto from the inside out.

With no eight trigrams seal to inhibit it, Kurama’s chakra ran free, overwhelming Naruto’s own passive, non resisting chakra. Naruto’s skin began to steam as he began to burn.

.

The front row of Kazumas shouted: “Fire style, burning ash!”, and released a cloud of ashen smoke from each clone. A massive stormfront of opaque ash billowed into existence, swelling in size as the Kazumas continued to increase its quantity

.

Naruto’s dream changed rapidly and painfully. All of a sudden, the ground fell away from under his feet, and he was in Kaguya’s lava dimension, except that unlike last time, he wasn’t flying. A yell escaped his lips as he fell into the boiling lava, his skin burning from the intense heat. 

Kaguya’s mocking laughter echoed in harmony with his screams as he felt himself burning, burning....

With a yell and a sudden jolt of movement, Naruto awoke from his nightmare. His body burned like it hadn’t since the day he had lost control of his rage against Pain. The old but familiar searing heat of the ninetails’ chakra coursed throughout his body, a toxic red cloud of it surrounding him.

Barely able to breathe and still not entirely able to tell dream from reality, Naruto struggled to gather his thoughts. He was still barely awake, his eyes protesting against being forced to stay open against their will. 

The world around him was entirely blurry, and the burning pain in his limbs was the only thing keeping him conscious. What had happened?

He looked up at the large, dark blur of haze that was approaching him. Was he still dreaming? There was a voice calling out to him in his head, he belatedly realised. It had been yelling for some time

“Uhhhhh....”, he mumbled, trying to form a coherent thought. “Are you talking to me?”. The voice fell silent for a second before resuming with twice the intensity. “FINALLY! YOU FINALLY WOKE- HEY, NO DON’T DRIFT BACK TO SLEEP! STOP! HEY, YOU!”. Naruto’s eyes had been closing, but jerked back open at the exclamation.

Kurama sighed. “You’re finally awake. How could you do this to me Naruto, I’ve aged a few centuries in the last few minutes- but time for that later, we’re fighting Kazuma right now!”. 

Naruto tried to assign meaning to the sounds in his mind, but couldn’t quite manage it. There was a sudden flare of pain in his chest as the chakra coursed through him and it jolted him into a slightly more elevated state of consciousness. 

He looked up at the massive bank of smoke before him and suddenly realised where he was. “Oh, crap”. Kurama winced and slapped his forehead with his palm.

Slightly more than half awake, Naruto tried to gather as much of the situation as he could before the smoke approached. He had fallen asleep! Right in the thick of battle too. It was exactly what Kurama and Sakura had warned him about.

If he had the time to kick himself, he would have.

He winced once more at a flare of pain. He was burning alive. Was that Kurama’s chakra? It certainly appeared to be, as a single tailed tailed beast cloak had formed around him. But why did it hurt so bad? Realisation hit him as he understood how he had been woken up. 

He whispered an internal “Thank you”. A deep surge of affection swelled in his heart for his friend who had put Naruto’s well being over his own comfort, and had made the difficult decision to hurt him to protect him. 

Kurama growled. “You should be grateful. Do you have any idea how nerve wracking it is to be able to do nothing but watch as a madman tries to murder you while your host body runs around giggling like he got kissed by Sasuke again”.

Naruto tried to protest but he simply didn’t have the mental capacity for banter. He realised that the only thing keeping him awake was the burning pain of the chakra cloak. “Kurama, keep this painful chakra coming. If you let up I’ll fall asleep again”. 

Kurama nodded. “Of course. Why do you think I didn’t stop the second you woke up”. Naruto smiled again. It was nice to have a partner who thought on the same wavelength. “Naruto! Look at Kazuma!”, Kurama yelled urgently, causing him to look up suddenly.

.

Kazuma was feeling a modicum of confidence again. Sure, things had gotten a little unplanned with Mizuki’s eccentric fighting style, and his usual strategy of gleaning an opponent’s level of skill with a facade of light combat to test their ability had failed utterly.

He had been unnerved, but had rallied quickly. It mattered not that he could not form an analysis of his foe to work with. Flesh would still burn no matter how many jutsu it knew. The fight could still be easily won by simply skipping the testing phase and moving directly to serious assault. With that in mind, he initiated one of his many jutsu strategies, one of the simpler ones he had devised.

The first rank of his clones created a suitable smokescreen, both effective in size and level of dispersion. Kazuma grinned. Right now, he would be utterly invisible to his foe. He looked down at his arm computer, which displayed Mizuki’s unsteady form from various cameras hidden across the cavern. 

Kazuma frowned as he switched to thermal and an orange blossom of heat appeared on the ceiling. “Tsk tsk”. Sasuke Uchiha seemed to be getting either bold or impatient. It didn’t trouble him though. He knew the man was overconfident in his ability to take Kazuma down. He was certain he wouldn’t interfere until he had concluded his battle with Mizuki.

He stopped speculating about Uchiha when his eye registered movement in the feed showing Mizuki. Dark red chakra was beginning to leak out of him. Kazuma couldn’t prevent the grin from breaking out on his face. Finally, something predictable, something he understood, something he could analyse and prepare for. Tailed beast cloaks he was familiar with.

He looked back up. “Rank Beta. Commence!”

The second row of Kazumas stepped forward, weaving hand signs.  
.

Sakura ran quietly down the sheer side of the plateau, the old toad Naruto had summoned sitting on her shoulder. The noises of battle echoeing across the cavern suddenly ceased as a single voice boomed out a challenge. Sakura tensed involuntarily for a second, realising the voice was calling out to Mizuki, or rather, to Naruto. 

She resumed running downwards, and then froze again when the voice proclaimed that Naruto contained the chakra of every tailed beast. What? They knew? How? Did they know who he truly was then? But why continue to address him as Mizuki? 

“We really should be getting on”, said the toad on her shoulder, causing Sakura to shake her head and resume running. She had but one job now. To find out where Kazuma’s supernatural chakra sources originated. “Lady toad, you can still see the chakra trails?”. 

“Strong as ever. Just keep heading down the way you’re going dear, the strength of the chakra is only growing as we head downwards”. Sakura looked up one more time, concern on her face, before heading down once again.

Just because they knew who he was, didn’t mean they’d be able to take Naruto down. She trusted him to do his part just as he trusted her to do hers. Increasing her pace ever so slightly, Sakura continued running deeper into the abyss

As the light from above began to grow fainter and fainter, Sakura realised the wall of the cavern opposite to plateau she was running down was no longer uniform. Craning her neck, she observed that the rock wall was delicately graven with ornate patterns, and furthermore, cut into shelves uniformly. 

The shelves themselves were empty. Not decreasing her pace, Sakura quietly wondered what had been stored on those shelves, and which skilled craftsmen had carved the walls in such a fashion, and more importantly, why?

Kazuma was not a hedonistic person, that much was evident from his base of operations above. Why would he waste time decorating the walls of this cavern down below his raised plateau? No one would even get to appreciate it all the way down here.

Unless.. he hadn’t been the one who made the cavern at all. Sakura thought about it as she ran, not noticing the small white spores that began to bubble within the darkness all around her. “Sakura”, said Shima sharply, causing her to stop dead in her tracks.

“Don’t stop moving. Double your speed, we’ve walked into a trap”. Realisation hitting her with the force of one of her own blows, Sakura whirled around to see the malformed white creatures emerging from the rock. 

Not pausing to look further, Sakura was off at twice her earlier pace, rushing down the rock face as fast as her legs would carry her. Suddenly there was a blur of red that passed her by, and Sakura stopped herself just in time to avoid crashing headlong into a weird, lumpy white creature that had appeared to block her path, dark red chakra bubbling over it.

Sakura paused and in a second she was surrounded. Her eyes moved carefully, taking in these new foes and trying to pin a name to familiar appearances. All the creatures around her seemed to be strange, malformed animals made of some lumpy white substance, and the red cloaks that covered them all were immediately recognisable as tailed beast chakra. 

Sakura inhaled sharply as she realised the animals were the shapes of the beasts themselves. It was like a drunken sculptor had been asked to make clay figures of all nine and had failed miserably. The deformed version of the one tail that had blocked her path growled in a hoarse but somehow familiar voice as they faced each other.

Sakura tensed as she felt something heat up behind her, and dashed to one side without thinking, as boiling rocks of lava flew past her and right into the one tail in front of her. 

Wailing grotesquely, the creature was flung off the wall, and, melting from the heat of the rocks, tumbled into the abyss below, away and out of sight.

She placed the voice almost immediately. It sounded like a warped version of … zetsu. All at once she understood what the white, mottled clay they were made from really was.

Sakura turned around now that there was no foe at her back. It appeared that these … things had no true intelligence. And indeed, all of them growled or moved haphazardly around her, seemingly not aware of their environment at all, and only focused on taking down Sakura.

“Perhaps this will be easier than I thought”  
Without waiting any further, Sakura charged at the warped replica of the five tails, moving her fist straight towards its head. 

There was a burst of steam and a blur of motion too fast for Sakura to see, and then an explosion of debris as her fist connected with the rock of the plateau. Sakura jumped away from the falling rocks, careful to keep all eight of her foes in sight, as she wondered how she missed. Perhaps the five tails was just that fast.

Turning to the eight tails instead, she leapt at it with renewed vigour, striking once again. The beast’s replica propelled itself away from Sakura before she could hit it, and launched a bullet of ink at her as she connected with the rock. Sakura gritted her teeth as she realised that those tailed beast cloaks they all wore gave them the speed they possesed, and that she had left herself open to attack.

The ink missle flew through the air, deadly and precise, and collided with a wave of toad oil that shot out of Shima’s mouth, splashing all over the rock face and into the abyss. Sakura jumped back into a defensive stance, muttering as she did. “Thank you, Lady Toad”. “It’s nothing. But be on guard. These beasts are faster than they should be. There is something else at work here”. 

Sakura shook her head. That seemed to basically summarise everything to do with Kazuma. There was always something else at work. 

Carefully observing all eight, Sakura reexamined her strategy. Apparently direct attacks weren’t going to work. These things were too fast to hit, and though she had initially thought them too dumb to evade attacks, they clearly weren’t. Why then had the Shukaku’s copy fallen so easily? Was the one tail just that much weaker? No. That couldn’t be it.

Sakura’s eyes widened. Of course. It had fallen because the attack came from another of those beasts. Apparently they either didn’t try to dodge, or simply didn’t care about their own side’s attacks. Maybe she was the only target they could sense, or had been programmed to sense, judging from their lack of individual intelligence.

This would be tricky, but she had a plan, or at least the beginnings of one. “Lady toad, please watch my back”, she said, as she channeled all her chakra to her feet. Crouching, she gathered her strength, and then jumped with all the force of her legs. 

The wall behind her exploded with the strength of the recoil as she launched herself away from it, shooting towards the other wall like a bullet out of a gun. Her hands out to brace herself, Sakura crashed into the opposite wall, destroying the delicately carved patterns and crushing the carved shelves into rubble. 

“Sakura, you’d better turn around fast”, whispered Shima with some urgency. Standing up in the crater she had created, Sakura turned around, making sure her footing was stable. She mentally apologised to whoever had taken the time to carve the walls she had ruined, and readied herself.

She looked back at the tailed beast replicas across her, and her face broke into a grin as she saw them all raising their heads upwards, the dark, spherical chakra of the tailed beast ball taking shape above each of them.

“I hope you have a plan of some kind, Sakura”, said the toad nervously. “Don’t you worry about it ma’am”, said Sakura, carefully channeling chakra into her fists. “I was counting on this”.

She held out her right hand in front of her as all the eight beasts turned to her as one, and they regarded each other for a moment. 

And then eight mini tailed beast balls flew towards Sakura, bridging the gap between them only a little slower than she had. Sakura clenched her fist. This would not be easy. It wasn’t something she had attempted before, but it was something she had seen Might Guy and Rock Lee do in the past, which meant that it should be theoretically possible to do as long as there was enough force behind the blow. 

She waited until all eight balls were nearly upon her, and then flung her fist carefully forwards, stopping just short of where she anticipated the tailed beast balls to almost be on top of her. Channeling all her chakra into her fist, and releasing it not explosively, but in a directed manner, she yelled. “Cha!”. 

Her fist moved in the air, the carefully directed force compressing the air in front of her, and releasing it abruptly as her fist completed its arc, turning it into a shockwave. A wave of force moved outwards, catching the tailed beast balls and reflecting them back to their source without detonating them.

As Sakura had anticipated, the deformed replicas stood still, not attempting to dodge their own attacks. She wondered if perhaps they couldn’t sense their own chakra, or maybe, any chakra apart from hers, and remembered to cover her eyes just in time as the balls hit their targets and turned the dark abyss into a starburst of light. 

A massive explosion shook the cavern, as eight mini tailed beast balls carved a chunk out of the plateau. “Alright!”, said Sakura, pumping her fist, as a second later she was covered in the avalanche of dust that had been dislodged by the explosion, and a hail of broken stone and shrapnel impacted the wall all around her. 

Semi-blinded by the dust, Sakura lashed out blindly, unleashing a second shockwave of far less intensity, in the general direction of the plateau, which she hoped would be enough to divert the shrapnel. Coughing and spitting, she blinked several times as the light faded, trying to get the dust out of her face and eyes. 

“That was well done!”, exclaimed Shima as the darkness began to return to what it was before the battle. As Sakura’s vision cleared, Shima pointed. “Look! Over there in the crater face!”. Sakura squinted through the dust at the portion of the plateau that had been blown off by the blast.

The crater revealed a corridor in the rock, the wall of the corridor seemingly having been destroyed by the explosion. The corridor seemed to lead away somewhere within, lights flickering along its length. “It seems you’ve discovered some sort of facility hidden in there”, the toad commented as Sakura readied herself to make the jump again. 

“You should know, child, the chakra is definitely coming from somewhere inside that”. Sakura nodded as she leapt away, destroying the wall behind her even further than she already had.

.

Sasuke Uchiha lost his balance as the cavern wall randomly shook him off and a bright light shone from within the abyss. He would have wondered what it was if he hadn’t been falling into a crowd of dangerous shinobi who would not take kindly to his presence.

“Damnit all, I’ve been overusing my Rinnegan”, he thought as he fell silently, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on Kazuma and Mizuki. 

Sasuke’s eyes widened as he realised that he was going to land on top of Kazuma. Swearing internally, he looked back up at the ceiling and, straining his eyes, activated his Amenotajikara one more time. Wincing at the pain, he found himself on the ceiling once more, once again taking the place of a random stone.

A stone whacked Kazuma on the head. He failed to react in any way.  
. 

The ground shook as Naruto lost his balance. Windmilling his arms, he tilted forward precariously as Kurama moved his three chakra tails, steadying him like a tripod. 

Naruto simply could not entertain more than a single train of thought at a time, and couldn’t devote any of his mind to pondering the causes or implications of the earthquake. 

Kurama rightly deduced that Sakura had probably been forced to fight seriously, and pushed it out of his mind at that.

Looking directly ahead, Naruto peered but could see nothing through the bank of smoke that was drifting towards him. “I can’t see anything!”, he said, frustrated. Kurama growled once more.  
“Kazuma’s chakra is flaring, I can feel it from here. He’s readying a jutsu”. Naruto nodded, tensing.

.

Kazuma stumbled momentarily as the plateau shook. He frowned. It seemed that zetsu was enjoying himself a little too much. “Don’t go overboard, you idiot. I’m trying to make a show of beating this man”, he typed into his arm computer. 

The petulant reply came almost immediately. “Oh I’m sorry, I was just having a bit of fun; Is that so wrong? This anbu is proving tougher than expected, you can’t blame me for getting a little carried away. 

And there’s no call for that tone now, is there?”

Kazuma shook his head exasperatedly. Even though getting zetsu out of his body had been the right call, it still annoyed him how zetsu basically did whatever he liked.

“Fine. Just get it over with”, he typed, and looked back up as a stone whacked him on the head.  
Kazuma’s impatience grew. Uchiha sure was getting eager, wasn’t he? Fine then. He’d speed things up a little. He nodded to his clones. 

“Wind style, Gale of Darkness!”, yelled the second row of Kazumas, before releasing a mighty breath of wind. The onlookers shielded their eyes as the mighty gust met the bank of smoke.

The gale blew into the massive cloud of ash, creating a swirling cyclone of ash and darkness. The violent clouds blew outwards away from Kazuma, engulfing Naruto entirely. They moved like agitated liquid, massive drafts of thick black smoke billowing outwards like solid walls of dark grey. 

Kazuma’s grin returned to his face. “And now for the finish”. He knew it would be more efficient to just use the jutsu itself to do it, but his theatrical side couldn’t resist the temptation. 

Pulling a matchbox out of one of his pockets, Kazuma lit a single match, held the match up for all to see, and slowly, deliberately, flung the lit matchstick into the swirling darkness. He turned away from the cloud, and looked down at his arm computer with a smile as the stormfront of ash became a living, writhing ocean of fire

.

You know, more than just one of us can help at a time

Shut up! Naruto doesn’t need any help other than mine

You shut up, you annoying fox! Always going on about-

Now is not the time to quarrel. Naruto needs our help. Kurama, let go of your pride, Naruto’s life is at stake here. And Shukaku, must you really pick a fight every single-

You don’t tell me what to do!-

Could we possibly-

I have an idea! Why don’t we-

QUIET DOWN YOU ALL! WE MUST ACT NOW! SAIKEN, IT’S JUST YOU AND ME. LET’S DO THIS

.

All the assembled shinobi drew their collective breath at the spectacle of the combined fire/wind style jutsu. It was certainly a very basic combination, but the execution had been performed with such pizzaz, and on such a magnified scale, using clones to vastly increase the effectiveness, power and area of effect of the jutsu, that everyone couldn’t help marvelling at the scale of it all. 

More than anything it made for a breathtaking spectacle, which was exactly what Kazuma had been going for. “That ought to get their blood pumping”, he thought with satisfaction, as he nervously double checked his arm computer and made sure that all the apparatus installed at the hidden villages was manned and ready.

Having a little show before the invasion was all well and good, but he still had to ensure that everything was set for the invasion itself to go on smoothly.

Judging enough time to have passed, he turned around at a carefully calculated pace that suggested nonchalance, and yet also held a definite hint of deliberate movement. He allowed his grin to show some teeth.

The brilliance of the conflagration reflected off his hair, and his silver eye caught and reflected the light, making it appear to possess its own orange glow. 

The flaming wind still writhed and danced even as it began to reduce in intensity and revert into plain old smoke. A cheer began to build among the watching shinobi, one that swelled in volume until the whole crowd was yelling wildly. 

.

Sasuke was irked. He disliked raucious cheering enormously. He grimaced as he gazed into the burning remains of Kazuma’s jutsu.

It had certainly been a very... interesting fight. “Things just get more and more ‘interesting’ huh”, he thought bitterly as he tried to make sense of it.

Mizuki’s behaviour had utterly defied expectation and reason. It had started out predictably enough with a short lived exchange of verbal barbs and had immediately devolved into something resembling lunacy. 

Mizuki had been battling with his eyes shut. Making no move to dodge Kazuma, laughing maniacally at sporadic intervals, and moving unpredictably. It was the single most effective intimidation tactic Sasuke had ever witnessed. Madara Uchiha himself could not have intimidated a foe better.

His manner of movement almost reminded him of the Drunken Fist, but it seemed somehow even less predictable than that legendary style, if that were even possible.

Things began to slow down when the tailed beast cloak had emerged. Sasuke marvelled at that fact. It was the only time in recorded history he could think of that a tailed beast cloak emerging was seen as a sign of things ‘slowing down’. 

But then again, he had never witnessed a fighter ever employ Mizuki’s peculiar style of fighting. It required an incredible level of confidence and fine motor control to pull off. Truly, the man had turned into quite the enigma.

Sasuke wished Naruto were here to witness this. He could only imagine how amused Naruto would be by Mizuki’s insane fighting style. Intimidation didn’t really work on him.

The smoking wind finally began to dissipate, little columns of flame burning out in the ashen air as its whirling currents slowed down. Sasuke gazed into the heart of the haze, and put a hand to his chin upon beholding what lay within. He smiled with something resembling mania, aggravated that life just didn’t seem to want to lay off him with the unexpected developments that day.

“Interesting”  
.

Kazuma was having difficulty deciphering what his monitor was showing him. The various angles of his cameras presented him with the same, baffling image. A black sphere.

What was that? Was it the tailed beast cloak’s fourth tail? Was it that cocoon of blood that formed around a Jinchuriki that entered into that frenzied state?

No. Kazuma narrowed his eyes. That process was a far more.... violent one. This sphere seemed static. Tame. 

What was it then?

As the flames died out for good, the sphere reflected the slanting sunlight in a way that made it immediately obvious to all observing it exactly what it was.

“A.... bubble?”. It appeared to be.... a bubble. A pitch black one at that.

The bubble quivered before popping abruptly, exploding outwards in a small wave of ink, and dumping the sodden Mizuki on to the ground, completely unscathed by Kazuma’s fire. 

Kazuma’s eyes were slits. How very fascinating..... unexpected, but fascinating nonetheless.

Kazuma had studied the Tailed Beasts extensively. Unless he was entirely mistaken, ink was the trademark of the eight tails’ jutsu. But then again, bubbles were the Six tails’ territory. Was Mizuki somehow using the chakra of both beasts?

Mizuki wobbled to his feet, showcasing the same lack of coordination he had throughout their battle so far, and wiped the ink off his eyes. The rest of it evaporated at a speed that revealed it to be chakra. 

Kazuma gazed at Mizuki with a million questions on his tongue, which he stifled. He would find all his answers on the dissection table. No need to rush. 

Something caught his eye. The look in Mizuki’s eye, it had changed. Firstly, and notably, it was open. He wasn’t fighting with his eyes shut anymore. He wasn’t engaging in those unnerving displays that had unsettled Kazuma earlier either.

Kazuma’s lips tilted upwards ever so slightly. So the man was finally taking the fight seriously then. His jutsu had had its intended effect, just as he had planned it to. 

Mizuki’s skin steamed, despite just having been drenched in ink. He was no longer coated in the tailed beast cloak, which puzzled Kazuma moderately, but not unduly. In the end, it didn’t matter what he did.

Kazuma had devised a strategy for taking down Naruto Uzumaki himself. This piddling imitation didn’t stand even the ghost of a chance. 

.

Naruto was struggling to stay aware of his surroundings. The tailed beast cloak had vanished when the Eight tails and the Six tails had used their combination jutsu to save Naruto from the fire. 

Even as he tried to gather where he was, the tailed beast cloak burst out of his skin once more, in a rush of chakra, that familiar burning sensation snapping him back to the present.

“Thanks, Kurama”, he mumbled, actually seeing what was in front of his eyes clearly for the first time since the battle had begun.

Kazuma was standing opposite to him, or rather, a whole bunch of Kazumas. There was some irony in Naruto fighting against an opponent who was using shadow clones, though it was utterly lost on him. Concepts like irony were beyond Naruto at the moment.

Naruto’s mind usually raced during a battle, thinking of plans and strategies, though he wouldn’t use those words to describe them. This time though, nothing came to him. All he could register was the row of Kazumas in the distance, and the vague sensation of the shinobi surrounding them.

The tailed beast cloak continued to burn at his skin as he regarded the Kazumas and came up blank. All he could think of was “rasengan. Hit him with the rasengan”. But that jutsu was off limits to him. What then....?

The main Kazuma laughed dersively, and Naruto heard a voice in his head, uncharacteristically gentle. “Naruto, why don’t you leave the strategising to me. You just do as I tell you and we’ll be alright”. 

Naruto’s knees almost buckled with relief. “Yeah. I’ll do that”, he said, his eyes only half open. Inside him, Kurama looked at his eight siblings. “Don’t get in my way”. “You and your ego”, said Son Goku, smirking, but Kurama ignored the jibe.

“Alright Naruto. Our first order of business is getting rid of those clones. Use your speed to jump over there and swipe at them. I’ll shape the cloak to do maximum damage”. 

Naruto nodded. Simple instructions he could understand. As his knees bent, tension building in his legs, the row of Kazumas reacted, their hands forming a familiar hand sign.

“Wood style! Wooden Dragon Jutsu!”

The plateau shook with the force of several explosions as dragon after dragon sprang into being, spiraling through the air, interweaving with the other dragons in a breathtaking display. The assembled shinobi took a collective breath of awe 

Distracted, Naruto gaped at the dancing dragons as they all changed direction collectively and headed straight for him. “Naruto! Attack!”, yelled Kurama, snapping him out of it and into action. 

Naruto jumped forward, directly at the approaching dragons, the force of his leap leaving a crater where he had left the ground. He raised his right hand and swiped at the massive beasts.

As he moved, the tailed beast cloak around his right arm warped and turned into the shape of a massive claw, which crashed into the first rank of dragons, crashing them into one another and shattering them into wooden shrapnel.

The noise of the crashing wood was deafening. Naruto fell to the ground as the remaining dragons veered upwards, twirled in the air, and as one, converged on him where he had landed, diving to the ground like unforgiving, crushing, rain.

Naruto felt something building up inside of him, and he heard Kurama say, “Yes, let it out, Naruto”. 

Giving in, Naruto gritted his teeth, feeling the chakra build up, and released a feral roar. The harsh sound destroyed the very ground he stood on, as a solid shockwave of force was unleashed with Naruto at its center. 

The dragons rushed right into the shockwave, and were splintered from the bottom up, breaking apart into sharp fragments that were blown away by the overwhelming force. Everyone gathered covered their ears, and even the spider on the ceiling winced at the volume of the noise. 

.

Kazuma was finally enjoying himself. The fight that had begun so incomprehensibly had turned around completely and now it was little more than an exhibition match for him to rile his army up a bit before putting an end to his opponent.

Mizuki was utterly and completely distracted, focusing entirely on his clones. Kazuma wove a series of hand signs and pressed his hand to the ground. As he did so, a series of marks slowly materialised on the rocks, spreading outwards from where he had touched it to cover the whole surface of the plateau they fought on

They were not the marks of the summoning jutsu. The pattern consisted of a single mark, repeated at regular intervals, ad infinitum. The whole plateau was now covered with them. 

.

Naruto did not notice it, but Kurama did. Snarling, Kurama directed his chakra as the tailed beast cloak moved of its own accord. The three chakra tails that emerged from the cloak whipped up and slammed into the ground around Naruto, writhing around and utterly destroying the stone that had been covered with those strangely familiar marks

Kurama was certain he had seen them before.

Naruto crouched in a crater of his own making, the only spot of ground in the entire plateau that was devoid of the jutsu marks that covered every other inch of rock, spaced at regular intervals.

Kurama gazed at the row of clones. “Time to go on the offensive”.

.

Progress log Omicron 01

It befuddles the imagination that Obito Uchiha had the eyeballs of almost the entire Uchiha clan just.. sitting here all these years. Zetsu tells me that he apparently carried out the famous massacre alongside Itachi Uchiha. That helps one understand how he could have squirrelled away so many of those legendary eyes.

A pity he was foolish enough to die before he could use them.

The power of the Uchiha has been one that has shaped the world, and one that would greatly augment my own power were I to find a way to wield it. One need look no further than Kakashi of the Sharingan for proof.

However, I have no interest in working around an uncooperative eye that burns my chakra and defies my control. There is bound to be a way to artificially control the various powers of the sharingan, at least with the knowledge of the nature and manipulation of chakra I have arrived at through extensive experimentation.

Obito had helpfully labelled each preserved eye with the name of the owner, so we chose a no name random Uchiha’s eye to begin experimentation with

Our initial goal is simple enuogh; Artificial activation and deactivation of the Sharingan

.

Progress log Omicron 04

Arriving at the exact type of chakra necessary for Sharingan manipulation from scratch requires time I do not have. Luckily enough, I do possess history’s most powerful Uchiha working as my personal servant.

We hooked Madara up to our chakra and brainwave sensors and had him activate and deactivate his sharingan. Working with reanimated shinobi is such a simple matter when compared to working with live subjects. There’s no need to muck around with safety precautions of any kind to keep them alive, since they’re already dead.

I should have thought of using reanimations as test subjects for experiments far sooner!  
Of course, while it is theoretically possible to just use an army of reanimations instead of regular shinobi, I’m not willing to take the risk of creating an army that I do not have complete control over. Look where that got Kabuto Yakushi in the end.

For now I shall restrict their use to experiments that do not possess ‘effect on a living shinobi’ as a parameter.

Returning to the subject, we were able to successfully narrow down on and replicate the chakra patterns produced by Madara Uchiha’s brain upon activating and deactivating his sharingan. 

All we needed do was replicate those and hook up the optic nerve of our test sharingan to our chakra pattern generator, to see if it had the same effect, and it did.

As of this progress log, we have arrived at the method to artificially control a sharingan eye in a way that only an Uchiha could.

Surely replicating this methodology with the Mangekyo sharingan should yield just as easy a success, if not a far more useful one

.

Progress Log Omicron 05

The mangekyo Sharingan is proving frustrating. The frequency of the chakra generated by Madara’s brain fluctuates so often and wildly during its use that it’s proven so far impossible to replicate with the machine. 

I asked Madara directly, and he revealed that severe emotional trauma was the necessary catalyst for the mangekyo to manifest in an Uchiha. Perhaps that has something to do with the wild swings in the chakra generation for the same.

The solution is and was obvious.

We hooked up Madara to our test sharingan and had him cast a genjutsu on himself to relive his most emotionally traumatic moments. Which upon questioning was revealed to be his brother’s death.  
How commonplace. One would expect the great Madara Uchiha to have a more unique source of motivation.

I had him squirm a little longer than necessary. It is extremely cathartic to watch him weep. However it made zetsu uncofortable, and so I ended the experiment eventually. 

In short, the experiment proved successful and he was able to awaken the Mangekyo Sharingan of the eye.

Manipulating the Mangekyo has proven far easier than awakening it. 

As things stand now, it is only a matter of time before the full extent of the sharingan’s abilities are within our reach.

.

Kazuma typed in commands into his arm computer, directing the chakra modulation system he had built from scratch and only recently perfected. He smiled as he felt the rush of chakra flowing into his eye, and looked up, everything in unnaturally razor sharp focus. No movement missed him now. 

The soft glare of the twilight that illuminated the gathered shinobi, the still falling pieces of wood that clattered around Mizuki as they hit the stone, the crimson chakra that bubbled out of Mizuki’s skin, hissing like some malign reptile, forming the silhouette of a fox around him, all of it moved as if in slow motion, and Kazuma relished the feeling.

What intoxicating perceptive ability! Kazuma felt truly untouchable, watching the world around him and missing nothing. So this was what it was like to wield the power of the Uchiha. No wonder they had been so feared. 

Speaking of the Uchiha, the consternation he was no doubt causing to the one perched on the ceiling would be considerable. His smile widened at the thought.

.

Sasuke did a double take. Kazuma had done something to his arm computer and now his left eye was, unmistakeably, a three tomoe sharingan.

How? The eye had definitely been just black before. Sasuke had dismissed it as heterochromia. 

Only an Uchiha could deactivate and activate a sharingan, and he was certain of Kazuma’s identity, and he knew that the former D of the cloud was not an Uchiha.

All previous wielders of secondhand sharingan, be it Danzo or even Kakashi, had been forced to close their eyes when not in use, to prevent the constant drain on their chakra.

How then had Kazuma managed it? Sasuke’s eye caught sight of the arm computer and he inhaled sharply, understanding. The concept itself was far fetched.... He had typed something into it first. Somehow, Kazuma had found a way to artificially activate a sharingan using his technology. 

Sasuke felt a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. 

What else had Kazuma figured out how to do?

.

Kazuma saw the ground rumbling under his feet years before it actually broke open. He leapt out of the way with an easy grace as the ground exploded and three chakra tails shot out of the fissure, thrashing about and destroying all of Kazuma’s clones, who hadn’t seen it coming.

Kazuma smiled with the overconfidence of a shinobi that had not only rigged the battle, but the entire battlefield as well. He leapt above one of the chakra tails that had shot out after him, twisting in midair to dodge a second one, and landed comfortably on the side.

Mizuki eyed him with the intensity of a jinchuuriki in the throes of the tailed beast cloak, the cloak’s three tails raised protectively around himself.

.

Naruto was certain he was dreaming again. Kazuma’s eye turning red was definitely a delusion of some kind. He tried to anchor himself to wakefulness, using the pain of the chakra cloak to focus. When he opened his eyes again, Kazuma’s eye was still, definitely, a sharingan

Kurama growled with frustration within Naruto. “Just how many tricks does this snake have up his sleeve? A sharingan. Ugh. I hate fighting sharingan users”. He spat in derision.

Naruto had been still for the last few minutes, not moving, and allowing Kurama’s tails to attack for him. The pain of the cloak had been eating away at him for some time, and though it hurt as badly as it ever did, he felt a little more able to focus on the present as a result.

Deciding it was time for him to take action, Naruto lunged with no prelude. “Naruto, No!”, Kurama yelled, even as he moved. 

He had covered the distance between him and Kazuma in less than a second. With the element of surprise on his side, he was certain his sudden movement would have caught Kazuma off guard.

Up above, Sasuke Uchiha shook his head like a refree that had just watched an inexperienced player attempt a strategy that was doomed to fail. Trying to catch a sharingan user off guard was impossible when their eye was trained on you.

Kazuma’s eye had detected the otherwise unnoticeable changes in Naruto’s posture that had given away his intention, and had begun to move to avoid the leap before Naruto had even launched it.

Naruto moved through the air in a blur of red, his hand swiping at the place where Kazuma’s head had been located a few moments earlier. In the same flow of motion, Kazuma had ducked, both his hands reaching the ground as Naruto swiped, and a sharp spire of rock shot upwards from the stone, impaling Naruto through the chest neatly.

Sasuke winced as he saw Mizuki skewered. That would hurt, but it probably wouldn’t leave a mark, given how jinchuuriki healed themselves. It certainly didn’t seem like Mizuki had much of a chance at winning this thing. Kazuma was just toying with him

.

The crowd erupted into cheers as Naruto’s world that was already shot with red, received a booster shot of the same color. A haze of red enveloped his vision as he re experienced the sharp, stabbing pain that his shadow clone had felt shortly before it had been dispelled. 

His own heartbeat pounded in his ears as everything faded except the pain. He wasn’t entirely aware of one of his chakra tails wrapping itself around the spike, and the other two levering him off of it. 

As the spire of stone left his body, the shock of the movement brought another burst of crimson hurt into his haze of dull pain, and suddenly he could hear the loud cheering around him, and Kazuma’s mocking laughter in front of him.

Naruto bit his lip as his chest wound steamed, Kurama’s chakra healing it even as it burned him.  
He was losing this fight. 

“Kurama. Let’s go into version two”

Kurama’s eyes widened for second, but then he nodded, focusing his chakra.

.

Progress log Epsilon zero one. The zetsu clone has finally reached optimum physical condition. Today we will…

I’m calm. I’m calm. Shut up, zetsu.

Today we will see if it is possible for zetsu to inhabit the body of a mentally inactive zetsu clone. And finally get out of mine.

It is unknown how my body will react to this change, and so I have grown a connector of zetsu cells by which I may be connected to the clone while the process takes place.

What? …………. Well that’s very nice but we don’t have a Gedo statue, do we? We’ll have to make do with plain old laboratory equipment. Now, do keep quiet. It’s a wonder you can keep going on like this when we’re so close to testing something so monumental.

Alright. Go ahead, fuse with the connector tube.  
Eugh. Sorry. No matter how many times I see that I never get used to it.  
Alright. Are you ready?

Very well. Commence the transfer.

Ooh, I feel faint. Ugh……. Is the heartbeat supposed to be that low?

Zetsu… I can’t….

.

Progress Log Epsilon zero two.

Zero one was a failure.

The transfer seemed to have worked, and Zetsu was able to control the clone’s body, inhabit it even, but the motion dislodged the connector and nearly killed both of us. Zetsu was barely able to fuse back in time.

Note to self. Plan ahead next time. We cannot afford such sloppiness. 

It appears that I still require his chakra while disconnected, and he mine, in order to survive. We have simply fused too deeply to survive independently anymore.

Unless we come up with some sort of way to move the chakra without a physical connection, this line of experimentation is doomed to- oh shut up, please. I’m not in the best mood and could do without your bothersome interruptio- what? Chakra……… broadcast like radio waves? Yes, that is what I’m currently working on.

I understand the principle, zetsu, but we’re nowhere close to achieving it yet. We already know how to broadcast chakra in that fashion but we’ve only ever been able to transmit information like that, not the energy itself. If Pain managed to move the energy it was probably due to the Rinnegan you tell me he possessed. 

I won’t deny though that it’s a line of thought that merits research

. 

Sakura held her breath as she walked down the dank corridor. Judging by the condition of its disuse, it didn’t seem to receive much.... use. Water dripped from the ceiling, which Sakura had difficulty seeing in the dim light. 

Her footsteps echoing off the floor revealed it not to be made of stone, as she had originally thought, but of some kind of metal. The walls appeared to be some form of metal as well. Sakura couldn’t entirely make it out, but dim lights that shone from the ceiling at regular intervals provided just enough light to see by.

“So... he built this place inside the plateau”, she muttered under her breath as she walked down the curving corridor. “They must have hollowed out the entire thing”. 

She kept a sharp lookout for any sounds or shadows that would betray the presence of anyone else in the corridor, but so far it appeared to be utterly deserted. The walls continued on either side, uninterrupted by any doorways. 

The whole place reminded her unpleasantly of Orochimaru’s hideout all that time ago, except it had a much more sterile, modern feel to it, with the metal and the electric lighting. “What is it with murderous shinobi and the need to make dark, dank hideouts?”, she griped as she continued her careful reconnaissance of the place. 

One of the lights above flickered, stopping her in her tracks momentarily. Sakura looked around carefully, but Shima reassured her. “It’s alright, child. I can’t sense any chakra in the immediate vicinity that isn’t either the atmospheric chakra overwhelming the place, or our own”. 

Sakura looked at her. “How can you make out individual chakra signatures in this place?”. Shima smiled. “I’m not as old as I look, you know. This toad can be of use for some time yet. Need I remind you, you are looking at Mt.Myoboku’s most experienced user of the sage mode”. Reassured, Sakura nodded. 

“Please warn me if you sense anything approaching”. “Of course”, she replied, as Sakura resumed her exploration.

The two continued silently observing and exploring the lab, wary but ready for anything. The lack of any doorways or rooms or any activity at all was beginning to feel off to Sakura. Why guard an empty, disused facility with nine tailed beast zetsu clones? 

And the clones themselves troubled her. How they seemed to have no individual intelligence. She vividly recalled the zetsu from the war as all being wisecracking, devious individuals. What happened to change that?

They also raised questions about how Kazuma was cultivating and animating zetsu. The scale of the man’s operation still amazed Sakura. 

She had followed the chakra trail down here fully expecting to see Kazuma’s manufacturing facility, the secret of all of his soldiers’ extraordinary powers, and instead there was this: This strange, unused, dank, musty space. 

It didn’t make any sense.

Shima sensed her confusion, though that sensory ability didn’t have anything to do with her ability to sense chakra. “What’s wrong?”. Sakura said nothing. “Lady toad, if you can differentiate chakra signatures in this mess, can you pick out the strongest one out of them and take me to its source?”

Sakura reasoned that wherever it was coming from, that was bound to be the actual facility, and if it was coming from inside this plateau then the source couldn’t be too far.

Shima grimaced. “The strongest chakra in this place by far is the chakra of the First Hokage. It’s strengthening as we move forward. The change isn’t very noticeable, but it’s definitely present”.

Sakura’s eyebrows furrowed. As they moved forward huh? Sakura closed her eyes and recalled the distance of corridor they had traversed. She was certain it had not been an insignificant distance. Why then had they encountered nothing of note? No doors, no stairwells, nothing.

Was the entire plateau empty? Or did they just happen to be in a sector that was entirely abandoned? There was no consistency to the logic. The chakra was definitely coming from in here. 

With a jolt a possibility suddenly came to mind. Could that be...? Only one way to find out.

This time keeping a sharp and careful eye on her surroundings and their structure, Sakura channelled chakra into her feet and set off with a burst of speed, remembering to say “Hold on, Lady toad”, just in time.

The precaution was unnecessary. Shima had sensed the buildup of chakra and had anchored herself accordingly. 

They zoomed through the corridor, Sakura no longer watching the walls specifically but her surroundings in general, Shima still keeping track of the gradually increasing chakra trail. 

There was little indication of how quickly the walls were zooming by her, with no doors to mark the speed at which she crossed them. The lights above however, served as a reliable substitute.

Sakura moved through kilometers of corridor, senses alert, looking out for one, specific thing.

Finally, she stopped. Shima looked at her determined face as Sakura smiled. “It’s just like I thought. The floor is sloping downwards, but so gradually that it would be hard for anyone to notice unless they were looking out for it. The plateau is enormous, after all”.

Shima nodded, her findings leading her to the same conclusion. The chakra trail had been growing warmer and warmer as they moved.

Sakura clenched her fist. “Traversing the whole length of the place on foot is going to take too long. I’m going to bust directly through the floor”. She drew her fist back, tension building as she aimed carefully.

“You don’t want to bring the whole village down on top of us”, said the toad as Sakura calibrated the strength of her punch. “I know”, she replied, moving toward the wall. “Don’t worry. It’ll be targeted and focused. I won’t destroy any more than I need to”.

Having readied herself, she drew back her fist to her shoulder, and punched downwards, the momentum of her hand halting abruptly just before it touched the floor.

A sharp jackhammer of force cleaved through the ground below where her fist had stopped, a moderately sized hole appearing where it would have made impact. The noise of the breaking had not been loud, and what appeared to be an echo sounded again several times until it petered out.

Sakura dusted off her hands in satisfaction. “That should get us straight down”. She peered down the hole she had made. Shima peered down it as well, and realised that there was another hole below it in the floor below theirs, and another hole in the floor below that one, forming a straight, uninterrupted fall all the way to the bottom of the plateau, which she still couldn’t see from where they were. 

It was a long way to fall indeed.

One side of the vertical tunnel Sakura had carved with a single blow was the solid rock wall of the plateau. At least, solid rock on the outside, but covered with metal within.

Sakura looked at the toad. “Are you ready, Lady toad?”. Shima nodded. “Be careful”.  
Sakura placed a hand along the wall and jumped down without hesitation. Carefully channelling chakra into her palm, she placed it along the wall as they fell, controlling the speed of their descent by how much friction she allowed between her palm and the wall. 

They fell through floor after floor, passing by dimly lit corridor after dimly lit corridor. Not once did they see the slightest sign of activity, or indeed any sort of door or indication at all that it was a place that was in use at all.

The utter desolation of the place unnerved Sakura. Why wasn’t there any sort of apparatus at all? Any sort of sign that it was a base that belonged to their enemy. It was like they were falling through some ancient ruin that had been covered in metal for some reason.

What was the point of all those winding corridors if no one walked them? Was this place just a diversion or a trap? 

There could be no mistaking Shima’s detection of the chakra coming from within however... It certainly was puzzling.

One thing that Sakura did notice were the cables running across the walls of almost every floor. Even if the place was abandoned and disused, it still apparently required a continuous supply of power.

“Curiouser and Curiouser”, thought no one in particular, because no one inside of the Naruto universe messes around with words so whimsically. 

Far away in the land of clouds, Killer Bee released an impotent cry of rage at being unable to correct a narrator that was blatantly mischaracterising just how much he was willing to mess around with words.

.

Progress log zeta zero three

It is done! Our lab has a reliable and efficient source of energy, one that even the hidden villages haven’t figured out how to utilise yet: the earth itself!

The idea came from zetsu, who told me that through the course of his life, he had gotten quite close to the molten lower layer of the earth while travelling under its surface. That’s when it struck me! Surely such a perpetual, inexhaustible source of heat can be utilised! And so I have!

We had to dig quite deep to set up the apparatus, but digging is of no consequence with earth style ninjutsu.

Zetsu suggested we call it ‘geo- thermal energy’…. How ridiculous

I am beginning to think that he is poking fun at my tendency to label everything extensively with names that are uniquely identifiable.

Anyhow, I vetoed the idea. I’ve named this method of harnessing the Earth’s power to produce energy, ‘Volcanion energy’, a name I think is both stylistically better and thematically appropriate.

Zestu didn’t like it of course, and seemed to think it was a name that is already in use elsewhere. I am confident however that even if that is the case, it is one that is very underused. 

.

Naruto’s skin began to rip and tear as blood bubbled out of it, forming a cocoon of smoke and chakra around him. Kazuma’s grin faded as he decided that the battle had gone on long enough

A tailed beast cloak version two could do some serious damage to the base, even if it couldn’t touch him. It wouldn't do to have tailed beast bombs ricocheting around wantonly. 

Kazuma wove hand signs, calling his chakra to him and moulding it with the expertise of one who has been tutored personally by Tobirama Senju.  
He winced with secondhand sympathy at the agony Mizuki must have been experiencing, as the beast’s cocoon exploded outwards with a wave of force, to reveal the rippling, feral, red and black visage of the version two tailed beast cloak.

His jutsu ready, Kazuma held out his right hand as electricity began to dance across it, the sparks building with a familiar sound, one that almost sounded like the chirping of a thousand birds

Sasuke grimaced. Chidori. Kazuma was using the chidori. Of course he was. He did possess a sharingan now after all. 

Sasuke almost felt a sense of personal responsibility and embarrassment at Kazuma misusing his jutsu to do harm. 

He cringed as he realised that that was probably how Kakashi sensei had felt when he had attempted to kill him with it during the five kage summit. God. The mortifying shame of it all.

He would have to go and personally apologise to Kakashi once he returned to the leaf.

.

Naruto’s teeth were gritted at the unbearable pain, but at least he felt somewhat awake now. The sudden and inconvenient timing of all his fatigue catching up to him exactly when he was finally fighting Kazuma probably had to do with his shadow clone being dispelled, he realised with hindsight.

His shadow clone’s fatigue entering his body had probably acted as a catalyst for all the other repressed fatigue to besiege him at once.

He still felt the urge to just close his eyes and curl up and get away from the blinding lights and the deafening noises and burning, burning, pain, but now he could ignore that urge to an extent.

He felt slightly more confident in version two form. This tailed beast cloak was hardy enough that no rock spire could pierce it. Indeed, even Orochimaru’s vaunted snake sword had failed at the job. 

There was no need to pull punches with this man. One good hit and Kazuma would be done for.

As Naruto readied himself he heard Kurama’s voice once again. “Naruto, a direct attack won’t work on this man. He’s a sharingan user, he’ll see it coming from a mile away. We’re going to have to force his movement somehow, like you and Sasuke did with Madara Uchiha when you hit him with your sealing rasengan”.

Naruto nodded. “In other words, we do something to get him to be somewhere long enough that we can hit him”. Kurama repressed a sigh. “Exactly”. Naruto looked up. “Kurama. Fire a tailed beast bomb at his base”.

Kurama grinned, suprised. “Well, I didn’t expect such ruthlessness from you, Naruto. Let’s do this then”. 

Naruto shook his head. “It’s probably deserted since all the shinobi are out here, right? We can force his movement without endangering any other lives”. 

Kurama’s grim faded. “Of course”. Kurama’s expression changed as Naruto told him to do something else as well, a way to catch Kazuma off guard. Grinning, Kurama did it. The ground beneath them rumbled slightly as something was buried in it.

In the real world, Naruto tilted his head upwards, his four tails arching around him, as particles of red and blue chakra began to coalesce above his open mouth.

Gasps of anticipation went up all across the area as the watching shinobi saw the battle escalate and wondered how their all powerful leader would pull off his no doubt flawless victory.

Kazuma meanwhile, frowned. Just what he had been afraid of. How very annoying. It seemed Mizuki was bent on being as much of an inconvenience as possible before he was taken care of. The lightning in his hand crackled as he broke into a run.

Mizuki was a fool if he really thought his opponent would just sit there and wait while he readied his attack.  
.

Kurama smirked. Kazuma had taken the bait. He was charging wantonly at them, desperate to prevent the bomb from being launched.

In other words, they had forced his movement.

“Not bad, Naruto”, he thought, as Naruto’s four tails whipped into a frenzy, diving at Kazuma. Roiling hot harbringers of death that could kill with a solid blow.

.

Kazuma smirked as Kurama did. It seemed Mizuki thought he was playing Kazuma, utterly confident in his ability to skewer him with one of his tails. He really thought he had the upper hand.

Kazuma dodged and weaved between the frenetic movement of the tails around him, all twisting and lunging, trying to stop his approach. It seemed Mizuki was completely unaware of his true plan, despite seeing him set it up with his own eyes. How very careless of him.

Oh well, it was all the better for him that they thought they were in control. This would be over shortly.

.

Kurama almost admired Kazuma’s overconfidence. The man really thought he was in control, so confident was he with just the advantage his sharingan gave him that he was almost dancing between the tails as he ran, exaggerating his movements with unnecessary flair, putting on a show of dodging as he approached. 

It seemed Kazuma was entirely unaware of their true ace in the hole, which was just how kurama wanted it. 

Naruto had already pushed himself well past his mental limits in terms of staying awake for so long. Now it was Kurama’s turn to pull his weight.

“You’ve done enough, Naruto. I’ll take it from here”, he thought, as he readied his final move. This would be over shortly

.

Sasuke turned away. He couldn’t watch. Mizuki’s massive underestimation of the sharingan’s abilities was giving him secondhand embarrassment. 

This would be over shortly.

.  
Progress log Gamma zero one. Ssshh zetsu, I know you’re excited, but I need to think.

The sample procured is a chunin of the hidden stone that zetsu and I managed to nab. He was left for dead by his comrades because he was deemed too injured to be saved. It seems that even after the changes wrought by the fourth great war, some things remain unchanged.

The sample has been prepared according to the instructions, which I have devoted a great amount of time to studying. After all, there is no room for error with this jutsu. The amount of research Kabuto has done into the process though… At this point it’s more science than ninjutsu. 

Despite my loathing for the gods I have grown to respect Kabuto and his master, Orochimaru. Despicable though they may be, one cannot deny that they held the proper respect for the scientific process.

Right. All required steps have been completed. Initiating jutsu.

……. Amazing.. It’s actually him. There’s no mistaking it. Now, to insert the inhibitor before he gets his bearings…

…………… I cannot deny that having that in his head is a relief. The man’s very presence is so intimidating… I can understand how he cowed entire nations. Oh! He’s coming to. Zetsu, shhhhhhhhhhhhh. 

“Who are you? Where is this place? Why am I here?”

You may address me as Lord Kazuma. This is my base, and its location does not concern you. And you are here to answer my questions about the nature of chakra, as the person who probably understood it better than anyone else save the sage of the sixpaths himself. Now, Lord Second Hokage, please be cooperative and answer truthfully for both our sakes. I don’t want my time wasted.

“I see. Very well. Begin your questioning.”

Let’s begin. Firstly, in your understanding, what is chakra? Where does it originally come from? How do we humans control it so naturally? What is the relationship between chakra and energy?

.

Progress Log gamma 16

Madara Uchiha proved troublesome initially, but of course he proved no match for my genius. Now I possess the finest warrior in the Five great nations, under my complete control.

The man’s ego was staggeringly overdeveloped. So arrogant, acting like he knew everything about everything. I have relegated to him the job of personal butler and general handyman to put him in his place. Of course, I haven’t allowed his consciousness to surface, but it is enormously gratifying to watch the great Madara Uchiha taking out the bio-waste and washing the specimen containers. 

The reanimation trials continue to progress smoothly, with none of the other shinobi giving me anywhere near as much trouble as Madara did. The dead have proven to be an inexhaustible well of knowledge. With time and dna samples, I will soon possess the collective expertise and power of history’s greatest shinobi, all within my grasp.

I will be the culmination of years of combat and power, the strongest shinobi to have ever lived. 

.

Kurama’s eyes narrowed in focus as the fifth tail of the tailed beast cloak, the one that Kurama had hidden underground this whole time, burst out from beneath Kazuma’s feet. 

The arrogant fool thought himself so utterly in control, handing four tails with such ease, that he had neglected to account for the possibility of there being more going on that met the eye. 

Kurama smiled triumphantly as the fifth tail plunged downward, and stabbed into thin air. “What?”. Kazuma had vanished.

Kurama heard the crackling of lightning behind him, and Naruto began to turn his head, all too slowly, as Kazuma’s arm, coated in the chidori, pierced neatly through the version two cloak, and into Naruto’s chest.

The half-formed tailed beast bomb dissipated as Naruto roared in pain, a noise that shook the very plateau and sent another shockwave of force outwards. Kazuma merely covered his eyes and stood his ground, his arm still elbow deep in Naruto’s chest. 

“Come now, surely you’ve seen the flying raijin jutsu before?”

Naruto did not answer with any coherence. The only sounds he made were whimpering ones of an injured beast, as the blood that had spurted from his mouth upon being stabbed, was absorbed into his tailed beast cloak.

Cursing, Kurama belatedly realised just what the marks on the ground were. 

“That’s right”, said Kazuma, smiling. “I held the advantage from the very beginning. You never even had a chance of victory. I’ve rigged this entire plateau with the second hokage’s flying raijin symbols. What did you expect, fighting me in my own home turf? All I needed to do was activate the triggering mechanism, and just like that, I can move wherever I want on this plateau in an instant. I’m afraid you’ve underestimated me, Mizuki”.

The cheers were now defeaning. 

.

Sasuke winced. It was done. Healing from that would take a whole lot of energy out of Mizuki, and would most likely leave him unable to continue fighting. He had already been impaled once during the battle after all. 

He would take this opportunity to follow Kazuma into wherever his secret hideout was, and kill him there. Attacking him in front of all his men didn’t seem like the best idea. He didn’t want to have to kill all of them.

Sasuke stood up where he crouched on the ceiling. It was time to move

.

Naruto’s consciousness was sliding into the nether for the second time that day. His vision began to turn blurry as darkness began to encroach into his world. “No! Naruto!”, he could hear Kurama yelling vaguely, but he’d had enough of being yelled at vaguely.

He wanted to sleep so bad, and just be done with all the annoyances of this world, ones that kept him from the soft, comforting darkness. “Whrghsmm”, he mumbled, waving his hand dismissively at Kurama. Whatever it was, Kurama could deal with it on his own. He had to sleep.

As his head lolled and his vision tilted upwards like a skewed wheel that couldn’t spin properly, he dimly registered a flicker of motion in his fading vision, a shape.

Something on the ceiling that looked vaguely familiar somehow. That silhouette... was that..... “SASUKE???”, he blurted aloud, jerking back into wakefulness. 

Kazuma jumped at his sudden movement, and pulled his arm out of Naruto’s chest, leaping away from him.

Naruto could’ve sworn he had seen Sasuke on the ceiling. What? His vision came rushing back, along with the deafening noises and the overwhelming pain all over his body. Struggling to move, Naruto squinted upwards, but saw nothing but an empty ceiling.

Naruto felt an unbearable wave of pain from his chest as Kazuma pulled his arm out, and fell to his knees as the other man jumped away. Putting a hand to his chest, he yelled in pain once again as it steamed and bubbled, Kurama’s chakra healing it as best it could.

Kazuma covered his ears irritably as the incredible volume of the jinchuuriki’s cry shook the dust off the ceiling of the cavern, drowning out the cheers of his soldiers entirely. The tailed beast cloak bubbled as a sixth tail emerged, arching over Naruto as an armor of bone began to materialise around him

Kazuma swore. How was he still standing? By all rights he should have been out cold after that last attack. Not even a jinchuuriki can shrug off being impaled twice in one battle. What was this man? Was he fighting now on sheer stubbornness alone? Any person would’ve lost consciousness by now.

. 

Kurama was stunned. He had fully expected Naruto to have drifted off by now. Sure, he had called out after him for him to wake up, but internally he had conceded defeat. Naruto was fighting while barely able to use a fraction of his mind and focus, and their opponent was the single most devious one they had faced since Orochimaru. 

The chances of winning this battle were slim, and besides, Kurama was certain Kazuma didn’t want them dead, at least not immediately. It would probably be better for them to take the loss for now and regroup after he woke up at his full capacity.

It wasn’t like they were alone, after all. Sakura was still in play.

But against all of his expectations, Naruto had come back to life, yelling “Sasuke” of all things. Kurama stifled a laugh. As long as it kept Naruto awake it would do. 

He winced in pain as Naruto fell to his knees. Even if he could force himself to stay awake, being stabbed was taking its toll. He hated to admit it, but they were.. losing. If things continued as they had gone so far, Naruto would lose for good.

Kurama shook his head violently. No. He had already accepted defeat prematurely once. He would not do so again. He would fight till his last breath, just as Naruto no doubt would.

“Kurama, you idiot”, said a voice behind him. Kurama groaned. “Even someone as bull headed as you should see that you can’t win this on your own, hmph”. Kurama whirled around. “You keep quiet, Shukaku. As I recall you’ve been no help at all”. “Hey, there’s no need to call anyone bull headed”, the eight tails protested.

All of them froze as Naruto screamed in pain. As the noise echoed, they all considered themselves in the silence. “You’ve been having some real rotten luck with this battle huh?”, said Chomei at last. 

Kurama did not reply. “Listen Kurama. The only way we win this, is together. Naruto is out of commission, so it’s up to us”, said the four tails, putting an arm on Kurama’s shoulder.

Kurama brushed it off irritably, but did not contradict him. 

“If you like”, said Kokuo, “You can be the captain. The rest of us will follow your lead”. “What? Hey! I never said I’d follow that arrogant-”, the voice was cut off by one of Saiken’s tails wrapping around his mouth. “Well, whaddya say?”, asked the slug, as Shukaku continued to yell angrily, his voice muffled.

Kurama closed his eyes and nodded. “It seems we’re out of options. Alright. But everyone obeys my orders without question, alright? Naruto was my jinchuuriki first, I know him best”. The eight others stifled groans as they assented, Shukaku turning away in a huff before nodding.

“Good. Then here’s what I need you to do”.

.

“Naruto... You’ve done enough. Just sit back and relax. We’ll take care of this”, said Kurama as Naruto’s wound finished healing. Biting back the pain, Naruto tried to consider his options, and failed. Nothing was coming to mind. The only thing that stuck in it was that odd vision of Sasuke on the ceiling, and that refused to leave.

“I’m going to take control now, Naruto. Just leave everything to me”. Naruto nodded tiredly, realising he had no choice in the matter. Leaving everything to Kurama really did seem to be the only thing left to do.

.

Kazuma frantically entered commands into his arm computer as the bone armor of the six tailed cloak materialised. This was reaching into the territory of interfering with the invasion plan. He hadn’t the time for a protracted battle with this man.

It had to end, and it had to end immediately.

.

Progress log alpha 24

I’ve done it! I’ve figured it out!!! All those months of research and study and I finally have the answer! With this we can not only transfer chakra via radiation, but we can overcome the issue of range altogether!

The mechanism lies entirely upon resonance and the Earth’s ionosphere. It was by no means an answer that was easy to arrive at, but I’ve finally managed to implement it nonetheless! I am a genius! A once in a generation genius! No, a once in a century genius!!

The trick lies in using the atmosphere itself as a repeater to bounce the chakra and retain its strength over distance. The hidden villages still haven’t even perfected the technique with even just radio waves, and here I am with a working model that already uses chakra directly!

Oh they will rue the day when they sent Kaido out to die for them. Little did they know that his death spelled their own destruction.

It is possible to fashion receivers out of metal that conducts chakra, and alter their resonant frequencies to pick up on only certain types of broadcasted chakra.

In this fashion it should be possible to move chakra over even large distances and allow shinobi an uninterrupted, unlimited amount of chakra that will never run out in battle.

Any shinobi at all could wield the power of a god…

All that remains is to field test it over a significant distance. Which will require a volunteer to work with. Which is a complication

Construction on the transmission array is nearly finished, with the improvements I’ve designed. It should be functional in no time at all.

.

Progress log alpha 26

Well. 

The long distance chakra transmission experiment was a success. Chakra can be transmitted and utilised by shinobi over large distances, and my hypothesis has been proved correct.

The experiment however, did not go entirely as planned.

A captured cloud shinobi was used as the test subject, the modified chakra receiver implanted appropriately and the subject placed at a suitably distant location

For the chakra to be broadcast, I decided to use the strongest possible kind, in case the strength of the broadcast chakra is a factor in the efficiency of the process, and so the chakra we used was that of Hashirama Senju’s. 

With our abundant and thriving populations of samples of cultivated Hashirama tissues, we suffer no shortage of this most valuable resource.

Having set up a reliable means of observation of the results, the experiment commenced with the target shinobi suitably prepared for the same

It was..... messy. The man exploded into a forest.

Stop laughing, zetsu. You’ve had your fun already.

However, the fact that the chakra had been received into his body was undeniable. Once again proving my theory a success.  
Once we figure out how to regulate the manner of transmission, it will theoretically be possible for any man to wield the power of hashirama senju! What an incredible thing to be able to claim! 

Some hiccups are to be expected, but our greater goal is more important than the lives of the shinobi that will have to be sacrificed to work through them. More lives will be saved in the end, in a world without gods.

.

Kurama directed his siblings like a captain at the helm, and Kazuma watched as the spine formed around Naruto, forming the skull of a..... horned bull? That wasn’t the nine tailed cloak, that was definitely the skull of the eight tails.

Kazuma considered it carefully. The tailed beast cloak initially had definitely taken on the appearance of a fox, and so he had assumed it to be the nine tails’ chakra. But here he was, manifesting the skull of the eight tails. 

Kazuma narrowed his eyes. The version two cloak still possessed the ears of the fox. Which meant... Mizuki was once again using the abilities of two tailed beasts at once.

Kazuma’s arm began to twitch as his curiosity overwhelmed him once more. Oh, how he longed to know the secret behind Mizuki’s power.

He restrained himself, resuming typing into the arm computer. “Focus on the plan, the plan is all that matters”, he told himself, typing in commands and awaiting their result.

He looked up just in time to witness Mizuki’s tailed beast cloak begin to glow.

“Wha-?”, he got out, before the glow became blinding.

Mizuki shielded his eyes at the light, and there was a rush of wind as a shimmering wave of... shining dust(?) exploded out of Mizuki.

Kazuma’s mind raced, correlating the phenomenon with a littany of possible identifiers before reaching one. 

“The Seven tails’ scale genjutsu. I see”. He checked briefly that his chakra modulation system was still working, and continued gazing fearlessly into the light. He feared no genjutsu, but did suspect that Mizuki planned to use it as a smokescreen to attack.

His eyes on Mizuki, his razor sharp sharingan caught every minute movement of chakra. It observed as Mizuki’s chakra cloak opened out behind the man, and steam vented out of the holes. He recoiled as Mizuki moved in a burst of steam, covering the distance between them in an instant; Probably the five tails’ chakra, he realised.

He looked up as Mizuki’s arm rose above his head, the chakra cloak turning into one that was made entirely of lava, with razor sharp claws extending from its fingers, claws of blue fire.

Kazuma marveled at Mizuki’s utility with the tailed beasts’ chakra, and leapt backwards-  
Or rather, attempted to. His legs did not obey his commands.

Belatedly, he became aware of the solid coffin of sand binding his legs and swirling around his knees, and laughed out loud as he realised it. Truly incredible.

He looked defiantly into Mizuki’s eyes as the flaming lava-claw moved towards his head, and just like that, all was still.

The world held its breath.

The only sound was the sound of dissipating steam and hissing lava, the crowd of shinobi stunned into silence by the speed of Mizuki’s movement. 

Mizuki stood before Kazuma, his arm inches from Kazuma’s face, the flaming claws almost touching Kazuma’s cheek, lava dripping onto the floor, and hissing where it landed. 

Kazuma stood in Mizuki’s grip, immobilised by the sand, looking directly upwards into the face of his would be murderer, and smiled.

No one could see the pattern that his eye had changed into, no one that is, except Sasuke Uchiha, who was stunned into the same silence that had swallowed the plateau.

“Tell me, have you heard of that legendary shinobi, Fugaku Uchiha of the Evil Eye?”

Naruto did not respond; Indeed, he could not.

Far above, Sasuke Uchiha gave a strangled cry at the mention of that name.

Kazuma dusted off his hands, shaking his legs until the sand fell off them. He looked back up as the roiling chakra cloak began to thin, dissipating and sinking back into Naruto’s skin. 

“It is said, Fugaku Uchiha’s genjutsu abilities were even more powerful than those of his son, the scourge of the Uchiha, Itachi himself”.

The assembled shinobi collectively began to murmur as they noticed that Kazuma’s sharingan sported a different pattern than just the regular three tomoe.

Sasuke gripped his sword, a vein bulging in his forehead. He reminded himself that losing control of one’s emotions only jeopardised the mission, but he couldn’t help it.

That man down there, was wearing his father’s eye like some kind of macabre trophy.

“The secrets of the Mangekyo Sharingan were by no means easy to unlock. They say Kakashi of the leaf was able to activate his at will”. He laughed, a short, sharp sound. 

“I don’t bother with all that messing about with technique. I developed a way to control it precisely. No chakra burnouts for me, thank you very much”. He began to walk around Naruto’s frozen form, now completely free of the chakra cloak. Somehow, it still wore the semblence of Mizuki.

“Itachi Uchiha was able to manipulate time itself within his genjutsu, he told me so himself. He could make seconds feel like days”. Kazuma stopped and threw out his hands.

“Well! With his father’s sharingan, I can make them feel like weeks! Eternities! I can do whatever I like to you within the genjutsu..... forever. When you awaken, it will only be hours for us, but it will have been years for you. Your mind will be long gone”. He shook his head smugly, like an overconfident cravat-wearing attorney certain that he had won the case. 

“Goodbye, Mizuki. Thank you for a well fought battle, but in the end, you never really had a chance”

Naruto crumbled to the floor as the crowd of shinobi broke their circle and swarmed Kazuma, their cheers echoing into the ceiling cavern 

Sasuke forced his arm to stop trembling. He was no longer the same shinobi he had been when he had fought Itachi. He was no longer immature enough to allow something like rage or vengeance to overtake him completely.

There was a time to make his move, and right now wasn’t it. 

He forced himself to be patient as he tracked Kazuma’s movements from where he sat, watching as Kazuma motioned for two of his men to pick up the unconscious Mizuki, and walked away back to the big building with him.

Silently moving, Sasuke followed. His moment would come soon, he knew it.

.

Progress log Epsilon zero seven  
It is quite impossible for either of us to stay alive without the other. There seems to be no way around this.

Therefore, beginning with today’s test we shall attempt a different avenue of research. 

Several months of experimentation and research have yielded these samples of zetsu mitochondria and my own, which have been modified to be able to survive outside a cell. 

We shall attempt to insert these modified mitochondria into a sample of zetsu cells to see if they will be accepted or rejected.

If all goes well, it is a distinct possibility that we could feasibly come up with a method to modify our bodies artificially such that they will be able to produce the chakra of the other.

All attempts to grow a clone of myself have failed summarily. My physiology appears to be just too… unique, to be cloned in the traditional fashion.

Or perhaps it is that even my clones cannot survive without zetsu’s chakra. Either way, the idea holds too much promise to be discarded summarily. I am not through with this yet. 

.

Progress log Epsilon zero nine

The zetsu clone has survived into adulthood and seems to have accepted the mitochondria with no issues. I can only deduce this to being due to the fact that my mitochondria are probably half zetsu already. I doubt just anyone’s would have been accepted in the same manner.

Though it has proved impossible to clone myself, merely cultivating tissues has proven a far more achievable goal. The tissue samples have met with varying degrees of success. Some have perished and are irrevocably lost, some have survived but only barely, and just one appears to be perfectly healthy.

This variation is worrying, to say the least. I cannot risk my own life with such a low level of certainty.  
There has to be a way to integrate our chakras into each other’s bodies without necessarily having to share the same body.

….It occurs to me that this is precisely the same issue that most jinchuriki face. Perhaps I shall ask some of them. 

.  
“Sakura. You’d better stop now”

On hearing the toad break the silence, Sakura focused her chakra and slowed to a complete halt, resting her legs on the wall and squatting on it. “What is it?”, she said.

“The strength of the chakra signal is almost unbearably strong. We must be very close to the source. We had better proceed with caution from here. It’s likely we may encounter more sentries like the ones you destroyed earlier”.

Sakura nodded as she began to gingerly step down the vertical pathway she had created through the plateau. They were getting close, the toad was right about that.

As she stepped deeper and deeper towards the bottom floor, the hum of electricity and the noises of steam moving began to echo ever so softly through the air. Sakura tensed as she continued to move downwards carefully.

Over a hundred floors they had fallen past and she had yet to see a single sign of habitation or use in any of them. At this point, Sakura had stopped making conjectures and hypotheses, because it was clear that whatever the truth was, trying to guess at it would lead nowhere.

She suddenly noticed as she looked down that the tunnel through the floors she had made, came to a sudden end. Which must have meant that that was the point where the plateau met the harder bedrock of the cavern floor, and by extension, the lowest floor of the plateau.

“It’s coming from that floor”, said the toad with an air of certainity. 

Carefully edging down the wall, Sakura slowed to a halt one floor above the last, trying to scout the layout of the bottom floor from her position of relative privacy on the wall. She was certain that if there was anyone down there, they would be unable to see her.

Conversely it meant that she was also most likely unable to see them. She frowned as she considered the situation. “Would you like me to go on ahead and scout the area?”, asked the toad. 

Sakura shook her head. “No. You’re my guide. If something happens and you’re forced to leave there’s no way for me to summon you back. I have a better idea”.

Sakura bit her thumb and rapidly wove the hand signs of the summoning jutsu, pressing her palm against the wall. The markings appeared, and with a small puff of smoke a small, white and blue slug appeared beside them.

“Lady Katsuyu, it’s good to see you”, said Sakura with genuine warmth. “It’s good to see you as well, Sakura” replied the slug, pausing as she noticed the toad on Sakura’s shoulder. “Lady Shima, it’s been a while”. The toad smiled. “That is has”. 

Sakura turned downwards, gesturing in that direction to the slug. “This whole complex was supposed to be some kind of chakra production facility, and yet the entire thing is completely abandoned. Lady Shima here has identified that the chakra, which is mostly the First Hokage’s chakra by the way, is coming from this floor”.

She turned back to Katsuyu. “It would be enormously helpful if you could go down there and scout the area so that we aren’t walking in blind”. Katsuyu nodded. “Of course. I’ll be right back”

The slug quietly slimed down the wall, turning sideways as she reached the bottom floor and leaving Sakura’s line of sight.  
Sakura had just resigned herself to waiting for Katsuyu’s report, but barely had she turned away that Katsuyu re-appeared, sliming up the wall at three times the speed she had slimed down it.

Sakura’s eyes widened. Kastsuyu seemed.... tensed. The slug rushed upwards, stopping before Sakura. What had caused her to return so soon?

Katsuyu looked at Sakura. “It’s much worse than you thought. In the center of the room is some kind of hole in space, like a door to some other dimension. I didn’t have much time to look at it, because there was a man standing guard next to it”.

Sakura inhaled sharply. “Did he catch sight of you?”. Katsuyu shook her head. “No sakura, that’s not it. It’s who he is that alarms me”.

Sakura felt a deep pit of fear opening in her stomach, anticipating a name she did not ever want to hear again.

Katsuyu looked at her with something resembling despair.

“It’s Madara Uchiha”. 

Progress log Gamma 15

I will not hide behind bluster or bravado. This experiment frightens me, as it would any sane person. The subject of our jutsu this time around is one more fearsome than any we have revived before.

Retrieving the subject’s bio data was a simple matter. Apparently the subject spent years, decades even, hooked up to the Gedo statue, waiting for a successor to carry out his plan, when he found Obito. Visiting this domain and retrieving dna samples from the environment was trivial with zetsu’s knowledge and abilities.

All the necesssary preparations have been made. Sealing jutsu and several other precautions have been set up. After all, the subject did break free of this very justu once before.

Erring on the side of caution I have attempted to change the summoning formula itself to limit the amount of chakra the subject will have access to upon reanimation.

There should be no need for any of this. The period of disorientation following reanimation should be more than adequate to insert the kunai with the inhibitor tag and eliminate all further risk.

But I simply cannot take anything for granted, given the subject’s capabilities.

………. I know, I know. I’m not stalling. Don’t pretend you aren’t as apprehensive as I am. You did serve the man for years, after all. 

Alright. Initiating jutsu

*  
Kazuma slammed his palm against the ground, black summoning marks spreading from them like a wave. A circle of black surrounded the hog tied shinobi before him, the papers of the reanimation jutsu beginning to envelope the hapless shinobi

Kazuma’s breath was shallow with anticipation. How far he’d come. Everything had changed that day he had been swatted down like a fly, and here he was now, summoning into life the very man that had ruined his, summoning a god itself to dance at his beck and call

Truly, he had come far.

The papers swirled around the captive as they covered his skin, the ones around his torso forming into distinctive crimson armor, as it began to reconstitute the facial features of the reanimated man.

As it formed his nose and jet black hair, Kazuma, on tenterhooks, moved. There was no chance that could be taken with this man. The inhibitor needed to be inserted as soon as the jutsu allowed it. He moved the kunai right behind the man’s head, in anticipation of the jutsu completing its function

The swirling papers slowly ceased their dance, the grim, heavy gaze of Madara Uchiha burning the world once more.

Kazuma moved without hesitation, plunging the kunai into Madara’s head. There was a pause in the motion as he realised that Madara’s head was no longer there.

Kazuma felt a powerful grip on the arm that wielded the kunai, as Madara twisted it around, the kunai dropping from his grip. 

Terror seized him. He had underestimated him he was going to die going to die going to die going to-  
Madara had smoothly seized the falling Kunai, and now he swung it at Kazuma, who was far too overwhelmed by fear to react.

Kazuma’s flesh rippled as an arm emerged from his back, grabbing Madara’s and halting the arc of his swing.

There was another pause as they both stood there, apparently stalemated, Kazuma shivering with dread.

And then Madara released a short, sharp laugh.

“Zetsu? Really? Is that you?”. Kazuma’s skin bubbled some more as zetsu’s features formed on his back. “Indeed it is, Lord Madara. It’s so nice to see you again”.

Madara’s smile faded as he dropped the kunai and released Kazuma. Kazuma hadn’t realised that he had been holding his breath, and released it in an almighty gasp. Struggling to gather his wits, he forced his raging pulse to slow down as he focused on controlling his breathing

There was no need for such abject fear. He was a god too now. He would not lose to this man.

He turned around fiercely, having gathered his nerve, ready to go hand to hand with Madara himself, only to be met with eyes that were…. Lifeless. Kazuma froze. The fire had gone out of them entirely.

Madara sighed, a sound full of pain, exhaustion and resignation. “Why have you brought me back here? I am done with this world. My plan failed, my dream proved misguided. I have had enough of the tragedy of this broken world. Release this jutsu and send me back. I do not want to be”.

Kazuma did not move or reply. Gingerly, he bent down without moving his gaze from the overpowering presence opposite him, and picked up the kunai that Madara had dropped. 

Madara sighed once more as Kazuma began to approach him carefully, kunai held out on guard. “I see the same rage in your eyes. The same unwillingness to accept what you cannot change. You will fail. Intent is meaningless without power, and those who made this world wield even more power than I did. Your efforts will only be rewarded with disappointment.”

Ignoring his words, Kazuma continued to approach until Madara was within arm’s length. Madara did not move anything other than his lips.

“I won’t oppose you. I haven’t the least desire to affect this world now. If the living wish to run about in the ashes then I’ll let you children do as you please”  
As he spoke, Kazuma lunged, the kunai entering Madara’s head like a pebble thrown into a lake.

Madara’s eyes closed, resigned. “Your anger is empty. You are infuriated with your own powerlessness and project that as a dissatisfaction with the world. Your empty rage will lose against those who fight for things with substance, those who are full of things like ideals and dreams and people to protect. In the end, even I fought for a dream”

As the inhibitor began to take effect, Madara’s lips moved once last time. “You will splash about helplessly, inflicting yourself upon those weak enough to be hurt by you, and you will ultimately be consumed by your own emptiness. You fight for nothing, and in the end that is all you will accomplish”

Kazuma yelled, this time one full of quivering indignance, and moved his fist to strike Madara, before stopping a second before the impact. Madara was immobile, unmoving. The inhibitor had taken effect.

Kazuma still quivered in rage. “The impudence…. That arrogant bastard. Acting all high and mighty as if he didn’t die twice in his lifetime. Dead people have no business backtalking to the living”. Zetsu was uncharacteristically silent. 

Kazuma noticed. “What’s wrong? No inane comments? Don’t tell me he actually got to you”. Zetsu did not respond immediately. When he did. His voice was bereft of its usual jaunty tone. 

“No, I’m quite alright. It was just a little strange to be on the receiving end of Lord Madara’s derision. Now I understand why his enemies always seemed so easily disheartened by his words”.

Kazuma scowled, eyeing the stoic reanimation. Even silent and sleeping, Madara still evoked fear. Kazuma suppressed the emotion. “I’m not afraid of you”, he growled, thrusting his chin out as a challenge. Madara did not respond.

It was silent for a while

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It seems that the more a fic updates the more exposure it gets,,,, which makes it kinda bad for ones like these where I try to squeeze a lot into each chapter. So I guess when the actual time travel one begins in the next story after the next chapter ends I'll be putting less into each chapter and updating more often.


	9. Dream no more

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It still isn't over. Don't know whether to be proud or ashamed of that. Thank you for reading this far

Progress Log Roh zero one.

I have stumbled upon something so mind boggling that it merits its own line of progress logs.

Having made significant progress in all my endeavours thus far, with our ultimate goal remaining of course, the defeat of the five great villages and the two gods that protect them, I began to allocate some time of every day into perusing the rest of the texts of Ninshu that populate the shelves that constitute this cavern.

An unnecessary luxury perhaps, but one I believe I’ve earned. Stop sniggering, zetsu, it’s recording every sound. Anyhow, the Ninshu texts.

They appear to be a collation of the writings of various prominent figures within the organisation, and one volume in particular caught my interest; One that contains a record of conflicts between Ninshu, and its offshoot, the rogue clan of Indra.

The texts describe that Indra, the elder son of the sage of the sixpaths, wished to inherit Ninshu for himself, and refused to accept the sage’s decision to give it to his younger brother, Ashura. 

This was the beginning of a blood feud that lasted an untold number of generations. 

I asked Madara about it, and he revealed to me that the Uchiha and Senju were in fact, descendants of those very two clans, and their blood feud had survived over eras into the rivalry that was healed once with the formation of the Hidden leaf, and healed again when Naruto Uzumaki managed to convince the rogue leaf ninja, Sasuke Uchiha, to change the path of destruction he was bent on walking.

All this is very well and good, interesting pieces of history to be sure, but then Madara hit me with the bombshell that Indra and Ashura Otsusuki’s chakra apparently re-incarnates into living shinobi every few generations.

This was astounding information, to say the least. 

Apparently the first hokage, and Madara himself, were the previous re-incarnates of that chakra, and Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha were the current ones.

I cannot help but laugh at the unfairness of it all. How typical. The universe itself selects the hidden leaf village to birth gods over and over again. 

Bastards. Let them have their divine power. Let them receive victory on a platter from the sage himself. It will change nothing in the end. All the favour of the universe means nothing if you can plan for it all. Even if the world itself protects them, I will win despite it.

I will make my own power and show them what it feels like to be crushed under the foot of an uncaring god.

And then they will all- .... You’re right zetsu, I got carried away there. Returning to the topic of this progress log. 

One of the battles recorded between the third generation of Indra and Ashura’s grandchildren contained a description of a most intriguing turn of events.

It described how one of the wielders of the sharingan was mortally wounded in battle, and then somehow simply... I think the word translates to ‘canceled out’, the wound by sacrificing an eye for the same.

I didn’t know exactly what to make of that. Suspecting that I was missing some detail or the other due to the older style of writing, I asked Madara about it, who seems to know far more than he should.

What he told me... well... let’s just say I massively underestimated just how much I didn’t know about how the world works.

Apparently.. This is going to sound impossible, but Madara himself assured me of its veracity. 

Apparently, an Uchiha possessing a Mangekyo Sharingan, can manipulate reality itself by sacrificing an eye to simply change the world around them. Somehow using the original Yin and Yang styles of the sixpaths to do so.

Madara himself used this technique to survive that legendary battle with Hashirama Senju where he was said to have persished. He effectively.... canceled out his own death. 

The insanity. Everytime I think I have a handle on how chakra works, I find out that apparently there’s some insane, logic defying thing that can be done with it, and somehow the hidden leaf has been doing it for decades.

I have never been closer to giving up my goal entirely than I was then. Just when I thought I finally had it all figured out, I find out that Sasuke could just undo my hard won victory if he wished, literally changing reality itself. The universe loves those two brats to a level where it’s just.... it grates against my being just how easy they had it.

It almost seems like God exists, and he loves those two above all others.

..... What a disquieting thought.

Thankfully my genius was quick to assert itself and dispel that uncharacteristic despair. Of the two of us, I hold more sharingan, more than anyone else in the world in fact. And beyond that, a treasure like this one is wasted in the hands of unthinking dullards like Madara and Sasuke.

I, Kazuma, will unlock the secrets of this reality altering jutsu, this ‘Izanagi’, and... good god, the possibilities.

Re writing reality.  
Re writing reality itself!! 

With this..  
I cannot help but wonder, with enough sharingan... if one could... 

If one could cancel out the events of the last few seconds at the cost of one sharingan, could one cancel out the events of the entire week with more? Months? Years? 

I could....

I could conceivably rewrite history. 

Even the ultimate God must follow his own rules after all. It is he who created the light and shadow styles, and decided how they affect this world. As long as I follow the rules of chakra and physics, it should be entirely possible to do what I wish to. It certainly seems at least theoretically doable.

Ha. I will use the unfairness of God’s own machinations to rewrite this world. I will steal the gifts he bestowed upon those two undeserving fools, and use them to end things once and for all. And start them anew the way they should be.  
. 

Progress Log Roh zero two

The number of sharingan we possess is limited, obviously. Therefore, the number of experiments we can conduct using a jutsu like the Izanagi is limited as well.

If I can figure out how to replicate the exact chakra signature or whatever it is that requires a sharingan to consume itself, I could conceivably replicate it artificially and remove the necessity of the sharingan altogether. After all, Madara can perform jutsu like the Susanoo’o, that ostensibly requires the presence of the Mangekyou sharingan, even without those eyes, using his chakra alone.

It stands to reasaon the same should be possible with the Izanagi.

Not only would this remove the eyes as the limiting factor, but it also greatly increases the scope of possible history alteration.

We’re going to have to glean as much knowledge as we can about this jutsu from a very limited number of trials.

Of course, I had Madara tell me all he knew about it first. Starting from scratch is an unnecessary effort at this point. 

.

Saiken whirled around frantically. “Kurama?? Gyuki?? Are you alright?? GUYS?!?”

His frantic exclamations were met with silence. All eight of his siblings had been channelling their chakra into Naruto when he had been caught by the genjutsu, and such was its power that their own chakra had been sucked into it as well. 

Saiken was uneasy. He had grown used to the company of his siblings, or at least, the version of him embedded in Naruto. He had no idea how his main body would feel about it, but this silence was beyond disquieting.

The six tailed slug had snapped to attention alongside the other tailed beasts, though his enthusiasm had been somewhat quashed by Kurama’s excluding him from everyone’s combination jutsu, something that would soon prove to be a (unintentionally) wise precaution when the other eight were knocked out by the genjutsu that had hit Naruto. 

Saiken had jumped in immediately to continue maintaining the transformation jutsu. It would be disastrous for everyone involved if Naruto were to be found out.

Now he was the only conscious one in Naruto’s body. He watched apprehensively as Kazuma’s goons picked up the unconscious Naruto and carried him into their large headquarters. 

“Guys! Guys, wake up!! Come on!!”. He slimed over to where Shukaku lay unconscious. “Get up you loudmouthed- uh.... loudmouth!”, he said, two of his tails wrapping around Shukaku and shaking him up and down like a can of carbonated water.

The tanuki did not respond. 

Saiken let out a frustrated gurgle. “Kokuo! Matatabi! Wake up!”. He turned back to the dozing Nine tails. “Kurama, you’re too stubborn to be beaten by this!”.

Nothing was working. He was on his own. Which was fine. He was not weak by any standards. All the same, the sight of his motionless siblings, all of whom were at least as strong as he was, reminded him not to get cocky. 

He forced himself to calm down. He was no piddling... piddler! He was a tailed beast! And he would remind Kazuma of that the hard way.

Pondering what to do, the answer came to him almost immediately now that he could think clearly. It was an embarrassingly simple answer. He was glad none of his siblings had been awake to see him freaking out over something so obvious.

It was a genjutsu, so all he had to do was channel his chakra into them to free them of it. Even a genin would know that.

Saiken reached out with his tails and touched six of his siblings at once. “Release!”, he said emphatically, channelling his not inconsiderable chakra into them, attempting to overwhelm the artificial control that Kazuma exerted.

.

Kazuma walked briskly, two men carrying Mizuki’s prone form in front of him. Normally he’d be loth to allow anyone to walk in front of him when he was in a hurry, and he most certainly was in a hurry. The invasion was barely hours away, giving him no time at all to properly examine this most unique of specimens.

The invasion, the sooner-than-expected but nevertheless planned for battle with Sasuke Uchiha, and the subsequent certain battle with Naruto Uzumaki, would be done by morning, and come the noon he, Kazuma, would have successfully travelled into the past.

Only someone with his unique abilities and drive could have come as far as he had, he reflected, until one of the men carrying Mizuki stumbled momentarily, the motion jolting him back to the present. “Careful, you dolt!”, he said, smacking the unfortunate ninja on the head.

His left eye still wore the unique Mangekyo pattern of Fugaku Uchiha. Though the chakra usage was significant, he felt no strain thanks to the chakra modulator regulating it. 

He had had almost no time to run tests with this particular eye, having only just finished the implant barely a day ago, but he was confident it would follow the precedents set by every other mangekyou sharingan he had tested so far.

“Umm.. sir. Did you really put him in a genjutsu that makes minutes into years?”, asked one of the bodyguards who had witnessed the whole thing. Kazuma didn’t take his eyes off Mizuki, nor did he reply immediately.

The truth of the matter was that he had not been entirely honest about Fugaku Uchiha’s abilities. He had exaggerated the scope of his victory, wishing it to appear absolute. 

No matter how powerful the eye’s abilities, Kazuma had barely had a few hours to test it. He was nowhere near as skilled with the genjutsu prowess of the eye as its original owner was. The sharingan is after all, only a tool, and a tool is only as effective as its user’s proficiency with it.

Even if Fugaku Uchiha could force a victim to experience extended amounts of time within his genjutsu, Kazuma’s ability to replicate it was... expectedly less overwhelming. 

But of course, he didn’t want his men to guess at any of that, and even his reduced capability had proven more than enough to knock out the jinchuuriki. 

Itachi had only needed 72 hours of genjutsu to break the mind of the sixth hokage, according to the Uchiha’s own testimony. Apparently the man had spent the time torturing Kakashi in an exponentially increasing fashion of pain, which, Kazuma admitted, was a creative way of maximising pain inflicted in a minimum amount of time. Kazuma admired efficiency, and Itachi had been nothing if not efficient.

Itachi really knew how to make the most use of his limited chakra. 

However, Itachi was no Kazuma (Thought Kazuma, arrogantly). Kazuma had arrived at a more creative, less chakra intensive way of genjutsu torture, one that would be just as effective as Itachi’s method, while being more sustainable in the long term of casting the jutsu.

Most shinobi had entirely the wrong idea of how to cast an effective genjutsu. They went out of their way to think up excessively gratuitous illusions, creating more and more complex ways to envision and inflict pain. That was foolishness. Pain was pain, (‘pain’ of course, referring to pain, not Pain.) and after a point you were just wasting your chakra on a meticulously rendered genjutsu world.

You just needed to stick to the fundamentals of inflicting pain. All the truly great torturers, like Ibiki Morrino, Itachi Uchiha, and even Madara, understood this principle. They knew where the line lay between effectiveness and redundancy, and how to maximise pain without wasting time on appearances. 

Kazuma had taken it a step further with what he had put Mizuki under. 

A form of torture that was worse than just regular pain. A form of torture that targeted the mind more than the body.

Shinobi had incredibly high pain tolerances. This was a known fact of the ninja world.  
It was safe to assume that the higher ranking the shinobi, the more they’d be willing to suffer for what they fought for.

The most driven of shinobi were entirely immune to pain being used as a torture method, having already decided to remain silent regardless.

Which was why, Kazuma’s avenue of attack did not depend on causing physical pain, not at all. His method was far more brutal. Even the most hardened ninja would crack under his technique. 

It didn’t matter that he couldn’t actually keep Mizuki under for an eternity. However long he could manage would be enough. When he woke up, Mizuki would be begging to talk to him.

Kazuma belatedly remembered his inquisitive bodyguard’s question. 

“That fool picked a fight he did not prepare for and knew nothing about, and now he’s stuck in an eternal genjutsu. Let this be a lesson to you. Act without thinking and you doom yourself to a fate worse than hell”.

The shinobi gulped and nodded, correctly interpreting his leader’s implied command to shut up if he knew what was good for him. 

Kazuma winced as a sharp pulse of pain bloomed in his eye. He resisted the urge to put his hand over it. So, he had exceeded the expected chakra capacity after all. No matter. He intended to maintain the genjutsu for as long as he could. 

After all, it was his trump card for use against Naruto Uzumaki. He needed to make sure it would work on a jinchuuriki like him, and he’d never get a chance to test it like this again. 

Kazuma flinched once more as he suddenly felt Mizuki’s chakra surge. His eyes narrowed. It was definitely an attempt to dispel his genjutsu. But who? How? Was it Uchiha? No.

Kazuma was certain Sasuke was tailing him from a safe distance. Who then? Who was attempting to free Mizuki? He inhaled sharply as a possibility came to mind. It had been said that it was impossible to put perfect jinchuuriki under genjutsu, as their tailed beast would snap them out of it. 

This was patently false, of course. It was entirely possible to put both beast and host under a jutsu, as had been done to the Fourth Mizukage and the Three tails. 

Was that what was going on here? Was Mizuki’s tailed beast chakra... co-operating with him? Had he actually managed to befriend the demonic creatures??

Kazuma exhaled. How very unexpected. And impressive. Though not unheard of, the phenomenon was rare enough that he had not considered it a factor. Both Killer Bee (his upper lip curled in disgust as the memory of the large, energetic shinobi entered his mind. The man made as much noise as a tailed beast), and the previous jinchuuriki of the Two tails, among others, were said to have achieved the same feat.

Kazuma idly wondered how Mizuki had pulled it off, before deciding he didn’t really care either way. He had no need to ‘befriend’ the samples of the tailed beasts he possessed, when he was easily able to artificially manipulate their chakra already. They were just batteries, and nothing more. 

Kazuma winced again, as whatever tailed beast was attempting to free Mizuki, did so once again.  
Its chakra was expectedly vast. But the mangekyo sharingan had been feared for a reason. 

It was the eye that could put an entire tailed beast under a genjutsu, and Kazuma, though inexperienced, was still fortified by the cold, mechanical efficiency of the chakra modulator, and was more than able to fend off the attempts of the one that opposed him.

His smile grew strained as he became aware of the readouts on his arm computer, watching the warning banners pop up on the screen in his peripheral vision.

Apparently this was going to be a field test of just how long his chakra modulation system could function under stress and outside of regular operating conditions.

He would keep the genjutsu up for as long as he could. That would give him an idea as to how long he could expect to be able to keep Naruto under. 

.

Sakura was considering her options, which, at the moment, seemed somewhat limited. 

It was her, a toad and a snail, versus the single most powerful shinobi the world had ever seen after Kaugya, and possibly Sasuke.

Naruto didn’t count on the list, because he was just Naruto after all. She had seen him destroy mountains with a single blast, but it was hard to reconcile those images with the ones of him spilling ramen all over his shirt or ramming face first into a tree mid-jump.

Strong though he was, she wasn’t about to put him on any lists.

Anyway, the current situation was bad enough as it was. 

“....Well?” asked Lady Katsuyu, looking at her with some worry. “Do you have a plan?”.

Sakura crouched where she hid. A plan? The man had beaten all the five Kage without trying. It had taken Naruto and Sasuke at the peak of their strength just to stalemate him. Guy sensei had nearly died trying to beat him, and it had taken being stabbed in the back to finally bring him down.

Did she have a plan? Against Madara Uchiha? She resisted the urge to ask Katsuyu if the slug had some brilliant stratgem that would guarantee victory. The man was wilier than Kakashi, nearly as powerful as Kaguya, possessed all the abilities of The First Hokage AND Pain, wielded the terrifying power of the six paths-

“Sakura dear, I can’t help but notice that your chakra is getting.... somewhat agitated”, said Shima.

Sakura stared at her bulbous eyes for a few seconds before the words filtered into her head. 

Shima was right. She was panicking. Spiralling. 

Sakura shook her head furiously. No. This was not the time or place to panic. Naruto was up there, risking his neck against Kazuma, depending on her to take care of his army by taking out his lab. Her stomach clenched as she recalled the horde of shinobi that had been converging upon Naruto as she had jumped away. If they were all as powerful as Kitetsu had been, even Naruto would have his hands full.

She had to rise to this challenge, even if it meant taking down Madara on her own. The village, no, the world depended on it.

Sakura forced her breathing into a steady rhythm. She closed her eyes and focused, and a little of the tension left Katsuyu’s body as she took note of Sakura’s calm (Though no one could possibly have noted the difference. A slug’s body possesses about as much coiled-up tension as wet marshmallow). 

Lady Shima did not relax, though she observed Katsuyu doing so. (As someone who regularly ate things with the consistency of wet marshmallows, Lady Shima was uniquely qualified to observe how much tension one such could hold). 

Madara Uchiha was not going to go down to any standard tactics. Sakura would really have to come up with something brilliant if they were going to have so much as a prayer of getting past him. 

Sakura frowned as she called up all her memories of Madara’s abilities. The overwhelming fear threatened to return as she remembered Naruto’s lifeless body in her arms, with her manual pumping of his heart being the only thing keeping him alive, but she forced herself to snap out of that spiral once more.

“Focus...”.

“Let’s see now,” she thought. Working upwards, there was the massive fire style jutsu, the sharingan’s perceptive ability, the wood style jutsu he could use, the incomplete two-headed susanoo’ that had summoned the meteorite... 

“That’s right. The meteorite”. He possessed the Rinnegan as well. Which meant the almighty push and universal pull, the chakra absorption, planetary devastation and whatever else pain had been able to do.

And then there were his larger scale abilities. The full body Susanoo’ that had dwarfed the tailed beasts. His six paths abilities, though she had no way of knowing whether he still possessed those. Those truthseeker orbs had been unforgivingly fatal. Then there was that purple lightning style ninjutsu, and his invisible limbo clones, and....

Sakura realised she was trembling. How could she deal with all of that all by herself? Naruto and Sasuke had had trouble with it, and that was with both of them working together. She was just..... Sakura. What could she possibly do?

The summoning animals seemed concerned, detecting the inner doubt that was once again raging through Sakura’s mind. 

“If you give up before you enter the fight, the battle is lost before it is begun”.

Sakura froze, wide eyed. 

Lady Shima continued. “I was there when old Jiraiya decided to fight a battle he knew he could not win. He knew he had no chance, and yet he never gave up, not even when faced with the certainty of his own death. That lad did not survive that battle, but he certainly claimed victory that day. Do you understand me, Sakura?”.

Sakura could hear her heartbeat roaring in her ears. She understood perfectly. 

“He lost the battle, but make no mistake, he won the war, and he knew it even as he... died. You fight for something bigger than yourself. You aren’t allowed to give up here”. 

Sakura frowned. “I wasn’t going to give up. I was just a little.. nervous, is all. I’m a shinobi of the Hidden Leaf. We don’t give up”.

She stood up, ramrod straight. “After all, it wouldn’t be much of a will of fire if any little breeze could blow it out”. 

Shima nodded. Her words had done their job. She knew the girl was capable. It only seemed like the girl herself needed reminding of that fact.

“Alright”. This time, there wasn’t so much as an echo of doubt in her voice. “We’re going to take down Madara Uchiha”.

She closed her eyes and began to think.

.

Saiken was beginning to freak out again. It wasn’t working! His attempts at lifting the genjutsu weren’t working! Kazuma was too strong!

“aaaaaaa....nnngggggggggg.....AAAAAAAA!!!!”, he yelled, running around in circles in his frustration. They were all still asleep, and he, apparently the most useless of the bunch, was awake and yet completely helpless to do anything about anything.

“Damnit!”. He had been giving it his all, but his self confidence had taken quite the hit over the last few weeks. To put it simply, he had lost every single battle he had engaged in. 

First Pain had beaten him effortlessly. Then Obito had captured him without even trying, and then once Naruto had freed them, Madara had captured him all over again, without so much as breaking a sweat.

The others were all alright. They were either proud or arrogant or stupid or, in a very few cases, level headed enough, to not let a bunch of rigged battles affect their perception of themselves, but Saiken was none of those things. 

He had been powerless against Obito, powerless against Madara, powerless against Kaguya and then powerless against Sasuke. If it hadn’t been for Naruto he’d either be trapped in a giant floating ball of rock in the sky, still in a genjutsu, or part of a larger being with no sense of self to speak of. 

Useless! Useless!

Oh, how he wished the old man were there. He always knew how to make them all feel better, to say exactly the right things to get them to feel good about themselves. It seemed like Saiken was useless without someone else to back him up.

Saiken collapsed, dejected. 

What could he do then? Was there anything even left to do? He was all alone, and lost. They had all lost. And it would be his fault.

“Yo, you seem a little down, friend.” said a voice, gently. Saiken jerked upright. “Why don’tcha let me bring your sorrows,”

Saiken whirled around.

“To an end? Fool! You fool!”

Slugs are not usually capable of a ten foot vertical leap. No one had ever informed Saiken of that fact, as he jumped ten feet up straight into the air in sheer suprise.

There was a man standing behind him. Or rather, in front of him, now. A muscular, sunglasses wearing shinobi, the shine of his grin contrasting against the color of his dark skin. Killer Bee’s smile lit up the entire mindscape.

“You!”, exclaimed Saiken. 

Killer Bee whirled around, a hand up in the air. “Me and no other, my slimy, six tailed brother! Fool! You fool!”. 

“That’s not strictly true”, said another, more familiar voice. “There is one other. Me”, said the eight tails, materialising behind Bee. 

Bee’s expression deflated. “Yo, way to ruin my entrance, fool! You foo-!”. “We don’t have time for this”, interrupted Gyuuki.

“Sorry Bee, but as you can see, Naruto needs our help”.  
The eight tails grimaced as he realised he had inadvertently rhymed.

Bee’s grin had turned into a frown. “If I can’t even rap, you can find your own way outta this trap”. He turned around and sat down grumpily. “Bee, are you really sulking at a time like this?”, asked the eight tails impatiently.

Saiken finally got over the surprise of seeing the duo suddenly manifest. “IF YOU TWO ARE FINISHED”, he yelled, spraying acid all over the place. 

Bee jumped and dived for cover. “There’s no need to get grumpy, fool! So just calm down with that acid drool! Yeeaahh”. 

Saiken closed his mouth. He hadn’t meant to spray. “Sorry. But everyone’s in a whole lotta trouble. Kazuma has got everyone under his genjutsu, and I can’t wake them up!”. 

The duo regarded this information for a moment. Bee’s hand went to his chin. “That’s a sticky situation, and no mistake. Stuck in a jutsu that ya can’t break”. 

Saiken wanted to scream. Naruto was at Kazuma’s mercy and this man was taking the time to make sure his words rhymed.

Gyuuki opened his mouth. “We were trying to contact Naruto telepathically to inform him that the plan is ready to execute, but things haven’t been going so well on your end, have they?”. 

Saiken shrugged. “I don’t know about any plan, but look! We need your help getting out of this fix!”. He struggled not to sound too frantic. Now that help was here, he couldn’t let it get away.

Gyuuki frowned. “You sound unlike yourself, Saiken. Everything alright?”. 

The slug paused. 

Of all his siblings, Gyuki was definitely the least judgemental. He wouldn’t laugh at him like Shukaku or joke about his insecurity like Chomei. Or heaven forbid, condescend, like Kurama. He shook his head. “Now isn’t the time. Just help me wake everyone up”. Gyuki’s frown did not lift, but he nodded. 

“Bee, act as a focal point for our chakra. The jutsu will work better with a smaller chakra pathway acting as the channel. The smaller the gateway, the greater the pressure of the channelled chakra”.  
Bee nodded, forming a hand sign. His expression was inscrutable. 

“Saiken. You and I will keep in contact with everyone else. Channel your chakra into Bee, and let him act as the vector to disrupt the genjutsu”. Saiken relaxed a fraction of an inch. Gyuki was here. He wasn’t on his own anymore. Things might turn out alright after all.

Elsewhere, Lady Shima’s stomach grumbled as she sensed the release of tension in a slug somewhere.

Bee’s eyebrows furrowed as the massive chakra of two tailed beasts flowed through him. Chakra began to rise off him in waves, transparent blue fire dancing along his silhouette. “All fired up”, he said with a smirk. “Let’s do this, fools, you fools”.

He reached out through Saiken and Gyuki, and felt the eight unconscious tailed beasts, their chakra circulating in an unnatural fashion. Bee noticed the sharingan’s unmistakeable pattern. Oh, this was a troublesome genjutsu alright. The trick would be to overwhelm their chakra flow with his own.

Bee began to focus, but even as he did, he spoke, at a regular person’s volume, which was positively soft for him. “Sometimes things get too tough for just one person to handle, you fool. Ya can’t do everything all on your own. There ain’t no shame in askin for help when you need it”.

Saiken tensed (Lady Shima’s stomach gave another twinge). Gyuki smiled. Bee was more perceptive than he looked. 

“So the next time you gotta go through hell, don’t even hesitate, just give us a yell! Fool! YOU FOOL!”, he yelled, suddenly at his usual volume, causing everyone’s chakra to jump drastically, while he let loose with the chakra he had been channelling. 

The shockwave jolted through all eight beasts, temporarily overwhelming the sharingan’s control with sheer noise. 

Kurama opened his eyes blearily. “Ugghhh.... You’ll never defeat me, Fourth Hokage... I’ll crush you, and then...”. He paused, getting his bearings. 

The other tailed beasts stirred as well, the whirr of Chomei’s wings filling the silence. 

Matatabi got up and stretched, its front paws extending as it arched its back. One of its tails fell into Shukaku’s open mouth as it yawned, causing a minor explosion of fire and sand as the both of them jumped away from each other, confused and annoyed.

Kokuo was the first to notice the intrusion. “Pardon my presumption, but are you not Killer Bee, Gyyuki’s jinchuuriki host?”. 

The babbling of confused voices and angry accusations stopped as all the tailed beasts turned around as one. 

Killer Bee stood there stoically, absorbing the attention, before raising one arm in the air. “WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”, he yelled. 

Kurama sighed. “That’s him alright”. 

Bee continued, dancing now to a rhythm that only he could hear. “Eight tails, that’d be me! The one and only rappin’ Killer Bee! Fools! You fools!”.

“That’s enough!”, said both Gyuki’s simultaneously, before realising they had both spoken. “Ah, me”. “Yes, it’s nice to see you”, said the other.

Kurama’s eye twitched. If someone didn’t take charge here everyone would spend the whole day milling about waffling and blathering. They really did have no direction at all without Naruto. 

Naruto!

Kurama’s mind filled with worry and sharp concern as he mentally felt his way outwards from the fuzzy prison he had been put in. Kurama was quicker on the uptake than most legends of his destructive rampages gave him credit for.

Most ninja pictured the Nine tails as a mindless, vindictive fox demon that felt a deep-seated hatred for humanity. Two of those descriptors were accurate. 

Kurama was no Shikamaru, but he was a sound tactician once he chose to stop mindlessly wrecking everything around him or ceased endlessly brooding about all the horrible and fancy ways he would have his revenge once he was free of his jinchuuriki.

In fact, his intuition for choosing the best times to try to nudge his jinchuuriki into letting him out was razor sharp, and it was this same intuition that now turned the other way, from maliciousness to concern, trying to divine the sequence of events that led to him blacking out and waking up here and now.

And most importantly, trying to divine if Naruto was alright.

It was still sort of odd, feeling the urge to fuss about one of those tiny, heartless, evil little things called humans, instead of just trying to crush them under his paws like so many annoying little ants. Bullet ants, that could pack a severe bite, as the Fourth hokage and Madara Uchiha had proven.

Somehow over the course of it all, somewhere between getting knocked down by the sage art massive rasengan mega barrage, and seeing the echo of the old man’s genuine love within Naruto’s blue eyes, somehwhere in that time he had ceased to see Naruto as just another human. He wasn’t, and he never had been.

From the pure power he had demonstrated in bringing Kurama to his knees with his own skills and knowledge, back there in the Tailed Beast Ruins behind the Falls of Truth, to the way he had been crushed and pushed away by the world his whole life. 

In both ability and experience, Naruto resembled a tailed beast more than he did a human being.

And yet he had not soured. He had not turned bitter. He had not become like Kurama, righteously angry and justifiably spiteful at a world that had deemed him not worth its consideration. 

Somehow he had kept hoping, and fighting, and moving towards the light, and shining so brightly that eventually the world had no choice but to shade their eyes or else be blinded. 

Kurama had often wondered if Shukaku or Gyuuki or Isobu had ever reached that same state where they began to see their host as something more than just a disgusting little human. Not as a fellow tailed beast either, but something in between.

Not that he would ever talk to any of his siblings about his complicated feelings towards humanity. He was much too proud for that.

Kurama craned his head upwards, his nine tails undulating behind him as he focused his mind towards Naruto’s. He reached out at where he had always felt that first annoying, then oppressive, and most recently reassuring, warm glow of his mind,

and found it empty.

“........”

Kurama gritted his teeth, his hackles rising. What was happening. Where was Naruto?

He reached out again, not noticing how his siblings quieted down to stare at his desperate rage. Naruto’s mind had to be there. It had sat there stubbornly for the last ninteen years. The very idea of it just hopping up and leaving was laughable. 

Kurama’s questing thoughts brushed against darkness. There was nothing there.  
Kurama’s claws scraped against the floor, as he growled in impotent rage.

He raised his head upwards, his nine tails coiling up around him like the petals of some terrifyingly destructive, murderously angry flower. (Imagine a little golden flower grinning a grin wider than its actual width, drawling “You Idiot” every so often, and you have a fairly accurate image of what that deep, empty rage looks like)

“NARUTOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!”, he howled.

.

Kazuma froze as the pain in his eye reached a boiling point. Struggling to keep it open, his world became suddenly clouded as something dark flowed over his field of vision. He felt something warm and wet dripping down his face out of the corners of his eye, as it burned anew from the inside. It took every ounce of self control he possessed not to cry out loud and keel over. 

Releasing a choked cry, he fell to his knees, a hand instinctively moving over his eye. He had enough presence of mind to leave a sizeable gap between his fingers such that he could maintain his line of sight on Mizuki, but by the Sage’s beard, did it hurt.

So this was the famous tax demanded by the Mangekyou Sharingan. The toll that one had to pay in pain, in order to access those legendary abilities. He had presumed to be able to avoid it, and now he was paying in blood for that presumption. 

He didn’t know exactly what had happened, but the pressure working against his genjutsu had suddenly receded, and then just for a brief moment, more than quadrupled. It was as if someone had pulled back the chakra for a hard but quick counter assault. It had worked. His genjutsu was all but dispelled. 

He held Mizuki’s mind now only in the most feeble of chokeholds, the mangekyou sharingan slowly dispersing into the three tomoe of the regular sharingan. It was only a matter of time now before his hold on Mizuki’s chakra was loosened completely, and his mind, or whatever was left of it anyway, would return to its place of residence, such as it was.

Kazuma forced a leg to move, as both his bodyguards had frozen with the shock of their invincible leader suddenly exhibiting signs that not only was he entirely vincible, he had just been very severely vinced.

Neither of them moved to help him up, their hands being full of lolling Naruto. More importantly, they stayed frozen thanks to a well-developed sixth sense present in all of Kazuma’s closest associates, the Kazuma sense.

The Kazuma sense was the ability to tell through signs other than visible ones, that Kazuma had lost something, which, two times out of three, was his temper. Like an angry toddler, he was usually ready to knock over anything in his path in a desperate frenzy to find it again. 

It was never intended as a personal slight of any kind; It was the same impersonal rage as that of a wall of lava sweeping inexorably through a hapless town. If you were smart, you learned to tell when the volcano was going to erupt, and got the hell out of there before it did. 

Shinobi who did not develop the Kazuma sense often suffered collateral damage, or became collateral damage. Strangely, no one who ever witnessed these outbursts ever brought them up again before the offending Kazuma, or the other unfortunate members of his inner circle. 

Cleaning up the multicolored remains of the last man who ventured into the vicinity of doing so, might have had something to do with it.

Kazuma’s inner circle had its own gravity well. The deeper within it you got, the harder it was to get away. Not that any of them wanted to leave. All his men were ready and willing to die so that the people in their lives that had, wouldn’t have. 

And furthermore, he had a certain charisma that made even the most cynical shinobi want to believe his words. It wasn’t just the absolute certainty with which he said them, it was the way he continuously bent reality to his will, repeatedly accomplishing the impossible like he had no regard for the meaning of the word. 

He might be temperamental and wound up at times, but with Lord Kazuma, absolutely anything was possible, even, the men believed, changing the past.

And so they stood with the unconscious monster in their arms, a few feet away from a man who had been known to incinerate or otherwise vaporise people from a lot farther away than that. 

They stood firm, self preservation not allowing them to help their leader, but not turning tail either, despite the building evidence that their choice to run would soon be taken away from them.

They trusted the man with their lives.

Kazuma wobbled to his feet, finally succumbing to the increasingly unresistable temptation to shut his burning eye. 

The men holding Mizuki trembled slightly under the burden of holding both the unconscious shinobi, and their breaths.

Kazuma wiped along his eye with a hand, and froze as the blood spattered along the screen of his arm computer. He began to quiver visibly.

Like bizarre tuning forks, the men began to quiver as well, though for entirely different reasons. 

Kazuma’s mouth was set in a thin line, his lips pressed tightly together. This was because he knew that if they were to open, profanities would most certainly spew out, and he didn’t want to wake their prisoner, who was now unconscious under his own power, free of the genjutsu.

His breath came sharply, threatening to burst through his mouth in the form of either words or jutsu. Biting his lip, Kazuma forced himself to take a step forward, and then another one. 

Taking their cue from him, both his guards resumed walking forward, both attempting to conceal their desperation by walking as measuredly as they could while still trying to move away from Kazuma.

Kazuma silently attempted to rein in his overriding urge to yell and lash out at something, not only for reasons of prudence, but also because he didn’t want to give Sasuke Uchiha the satisfaction of knowing that his father’s eye had gotten the better of him. 

With a shaking right hand, Kazuma gently wiped his arm computer against his sleeve, trying not to smudge the blood across the screen. 

His arm computer had been proofed as far as possible against fire, lightning, earth and wind. He had synthesised the polymers himself, tested their durability against the elements. 

After all, his arm computer was the nexus of his operation, his nerve center. It wouldn’t do for him to lose access to the network he had spent years building. 

The thing could take more damage than most shinobi, and had backups and redundancies for every possible situation. Or at least, every contingency that Kazuma could envision, which had to be every single one, surely. 

All the same, Kazuma couldn’t help but be overprotective of it. He had grown attached to it over the years as he had built the original design, improving it and modifying it every time he came upon a new breakthrough. It represented the culmination of all his research and experimentation, and he was justifiably proud of the end result.

Kazuma opened the surveillance webcam channel out of habit, as his fingers moved across the screen, and noted absently that the spider on the ceiling seemed to be maintaining its distance.

Sasuke’s silhouette on the screen snapped Kazuma back to reality. The hour was at hand. He couldn’t go losing himself in something as silly as a temper tantrum this close to the final stage. Sasuke was within touching distance, for heaven’s sake! (Metaphorically speaking, of course. Perhaps a very long-armed shinobi could manage the feat in a literal sense. That, or a sincere compliment from someone Sasuke respected. Those always left Sasuke touched)

Kazuma straightened his back and his head, pointedly ignoring the pain in his eye as he brought his pace to a steady rhythm. He was in control again. Just like Mizuki, Sasuke had underestimated him by choosing to fight him on his home turf. His overconfidence would be his undoing.

The two bodyguards, who will not accomplish anything significant enough to merit their names being known, slowed their pace, as their well honed Kazuma sense detected the subtle changes in the atmosphere that meant that their leader was calm. Or at least, whatever passed for calm when it came to him. 

Naruto groaned softly, causing both men to freeze imperceptibly before surreptitiously continuing to walk as if nothing had happened. Kazuma had of course, noticed. 

“Don’t jump like frightened children. He’s done. Even if he wakes up by some chance, and he won’t, he’ll need months to recover any sort of semblance of sanity, if his mind hasn’t just given up and broken”.

Mildly reassured, the two unnamed guards walked with a slightly firmer step until they reached Kazuma’s, as he called it, “External Base of Operations”, located at the heart of the massive building at the center of the village. 

Kazuma grinned at the sight of both this unexpected tailed beast birthday gift, and Sasuke Uchiha, quite literally at his doorstep.

“Drop him in Kitetsu’s containment cell and chain him up. Designate him subject omega 7, and begin the memory extraction process. I’ll begin the dissection after I take care of our ever so patient guest”.

The two guards eyed each other. They had no idea what Kazuma meant when he referred to a guest, but uneasily assumed that the remark hadn’t been made for their benefit. 

One of the two, who we shall call generic shinobi #2 for ease of reference, was actually something of a hobbyist bookworm, and had read enough spy stories with arrogant, posturing villains in them to realise that the ‘unwanted guest’ remark was probably meant for some dashing rogue, usually the story’s hero, who had infiltrated the lair of the devious villain, and had just been found out. 

He didn’t fully get it, but he understood that Lord Kazuma was having a bit of fun, and dismissed it as Kazuma’s theatrical side.

Unluckily for him, he stopped his trope analysis just short of identifying his own situation with the villain’s disposable guards, who were usually disposed off speedily to demonstrate the hero’s skill and seriousness of intent. 

One of the guards, the inimitable generic guard #1, let Naruto’s legs drop to the floor as he turned to enter the code into the keypad next to the door of Kazuma’s external base. Unluckily, that was the moment that Sasuke moved. 

There was a brief blur, and a small shower of dust that fell from the ceiling as the plateau shook with the force of a tremor once again, and then silence.

Sasuke’s movement had been precisely calculated, incredibly efficient, perfectly executed, and unfortunately, utterly and completely useless. 

Sasuke had waited for one of the guards to be distracted before he made his move. Kazuma was distracted as well, by his eye and his little computer, and Sasuke judged it to be the opening he had been waiting for.

Earlier, when Kazuma had fallen to his knees, Sasuke had almost leapt despite himself, but had stopped on the point of jumping. Making a pass at Kazuma while the man had the full attention of both his guards didn’t seem like the best idea. 

He needed to find a moment when none of the trio standing unaware beneath him would have time to react. He couldn’t rely on superior speed or reflexes here. After all, he had already seen an army of tailed-beast-cloak clad jinchuuriki, and his own father’s sharingan in play.

Kazuma had equalised the field, and Sasuke wasn’t willing to take even a single unecessary risk after what his day so far had been like. He would give the world no more chances to disrupt his plans, as it seemed hell bent on doing. 

And so, Sasuke had waited carefully, biding his time, and sprung when #1 had turned around and Kazuma was preoccupied with his monitor screen. Sasuke leapt smoothly, landing a step behind Kazuma with a grace that would’ve made Granny Cat proud, and lunged forward, flame coated blade aloft in one hand.

And then the plateau shook once more.

And Sasuke lost his footing for the second time in a day.

Sasuke keeled forward as his legs lost purchase on a ground that, like an inexperienced ball-player, threw him upwards with supreme confidence, and then fumbled the catch. 

Sasuke’s face headed on a direct collision course with the dust laden stone of the floor, his left hand holding a flame-clad blade, his right hand hanging around rather nonchalantly, buried underneath some rocks, decomposing in the ruins of the Final Valley.

Bemoaning his lack of hands for the first and only time in his life, Sasuke focused as a spectral purple arm manifested, catching the floor silently, and pushed off the floor with a rush of displaced air as he hurtled back upwards into the ceiling. 

He landed just as nimbly as he had dropped, with only a small shower of dust to indicate that anything had taken place at all. It been a brilliant showcase of quick thinking, masterful acrobatic ability, on the fly ninjutsu, and more than anything, a master class on fumbled plans.

Sasuke’s face burned a different color than the flames on his sword. He didn’t like being embarrassed in general, but this was just unfair. The universe was toying with him. 

Sasuke joined Killer Bee in internally cursing the omniscient force that seemed bent on being as much of a dick as possible, to him specifically.

The omniscient force frowned for a moment, and then went on to describe the state of Kazuma and his entourage.

There were a few seconds of disorientation as the assorted shinobi righted themselves, and the well beloved duo consisting of generic guard #1 and #2 found themselves scrambling to pick up Naruto from where they had dropped him. 

The Naruto in question groaned once more, in a way that was just so Naruto that the Sasuke on the ceiling would’ve recognised and placed the sound, and its source, in an instant, had he only been paying attention to his quarry instead of cursing mostly faultless omniscient forces.

Kazuma had, since a few minutes ago, gone from ‘on the verge of catastrophic eruption’ to ‘mildly smouldering’, a testament to his self control. The volcano had calmed down, and this aftershock posed no threat of reawakening its wrath. 

“Pick up the jinchuuriki, you fools. And be careful with him. We don’t want him dying or waking up before he’s in a containment cell”. 

#1 and #2 carefully levered Naruto steadily as #1 typed in the code with his elbow this time, keeping a precarious hold on Naruto.

Somewhere deep in the recesses of #2’s subconscious, his ambient sense of trope awareness recognised his place in the grand story of things, and was amazed at his continued survival despite the rules of the universe demanding he be dead at the feet of the main character by now. 

It dimly recognised that somehow, in some way, the world itself had quite literally moved to prevent his death. This knowledge manifested as a slightly increased sense of self confidence, and a sense of false invincibility that would lead directly to his vincing if he allowed it to carry him away. 

The duo carried Naruto into the External Base, followed by their leader, who was growing more impatient by the minute. Not because of any sort of annoyance, but rather because of performance anxiety. 

Here he was, on the threshold of one of the two grand battles. Sasuke Uchiha and Naruto Uzumaki. Oh, what zetsu must be thinking right now, he thought. 

“We’re finally here. Finally at the end of all our effort. The finish line”. Being so close gave him pins and needles. He wanted to make sure that Mizuki was locked up properly before engaging in the first of the two Great battles.

Kazuma quickly brought up the camera feeds of the Base, and was rewarded with the sight of Sasuke scuttling in behind him. That the man had remained patient for so long amazed Kazuma mildly. He had been expecting the assault for a good while now. It didn’t really matter, of course. 

Regardless of whether Sasuke chose to initiate hostilities or not, it would still end with Kazuma’s victory once Kazuma had him where he wanted him. And he was almost exactly there already.

.

Sakura landed running, and was moving before she hit the ground. Her eyes did not leave their mark when they found it, and she had to struggle not to stop for a moment to absorb what they saw.

In the center of the room, just as Lady Katsuyu had said, was a hole. Not a hole in the ground, nor a hole in the plot, but rather a hole in the fabric of space-time. 

Though the hole itself stayed stationary, position wise, its being was anything but. Its edges moved inwards like a whirlpool, draining away at the seams of reality, into some other less reputable dimension. 

It was like space-time was being drunk. Not like an alcoholic is drunk, but rather, to borrow the phrase, like a glass of water is drunk.

She wasn’t able to draw any immediate conclusions other than the fact that it certainly was a whole. A whole lot of trouble, anyway.

Sakura didn’t devote more than a few milliseconds to analysing the hole, because doing so would mean taking her focus off the man who stood in front of it, his arms crossed in a posture of all too familiar arrogance.

Trying to take in as much of her opponent as possible while wasting the least possible amount of time, she made careful note of what she was able to see as she charged him down. Madara Uchiha’s face did not look the same without that ever present expression of cocky malice. 

He stood, attired as he had been at the moment of his death, wearing nothing over his torso other than the serene visage of Hashirama Senju. His long black hair covered one of his eyes, while the other was invisible to Sakura at the angle she was coming at him from.

This was a calculated move. It meant that for a few seconds at least, Madara would have no line of sight on her approach. Keeping one eye covered by hair was all well and fine stylistically speaking, but it would bite him in the ass when he wasn’t able to see his opponent because of it. 

The downside was that Sakura could not see either of his eyes as she approached, and so was unable to immediately confirm whether or not Madara had brought his Rinnegan with him from the afterlife. 

This, however, she ruled, was an acceptable risk. Even if he did possess it, after all, he could always just have it deactivated, thus giving nothing away. 

Madara Uchiha was cocky. Sakura was counting on it. He played with his food, never fighting seriously until he had had his fill of fun. Sakura’s plan relied on taking advantage of this tendency to try to finish the battle before it could begin in earnest.

All these thoughts raced through Sakura’s mind as she moved within striking distance of Madara, who had begun to react to her presence. Sakura’s fist moved in slow motion, moving inexorably towards Madara’s head. 

Madara was moving backwards just as fluidly, his head turning even as his hands began to weave signs. 

Sakura’s fist completed its arc, having hit nothing but air, as Madara leapt out of range, and with no preamble whatsoever, held his hand to his lips, where five massive, flaming dragons arced into existence, converging where Sakura stood, her fist still extended.

Shima watched from the far wall, with bated breath, as Sakura’s extended arm turned its force downwards, striking into the bedrock of the plateau. 

The world was a maelstrom of dust and motion for a few seconds.

Noise that sounded like the coughing of golems, deafening and grating, echoed through the room as the rock split under the blow, titanic shards of it rising around Sakura like the blooming petals of a massive, earthen flower, which the flaming dragons crashed headlong into. 

The walls shook as the floor cracked, and Sakura realised with just a little bit of abashedness, that she had gone slightly overboard in the heat of the moment, and struck the plateau with more force than intended.

The metal walls of the plateau groaned under the strain. It seemed that, as long as they themselves were not the target of any serious assault, they could absorb adjacent impacts and hold up the plateau with a semblance of stability. Sakura wondered if that was its intended fucntion, before cutting that train of thought on the spot. 

Large boulders the size of large boulders tumbled down from the broken floors above, as the tremors moved through the plateau, shaking and fragmenting the holes Sakura had made through the upper floors. Sakura sidestepped them unconsciously, her gaze trained on Madara. 

Now that the first step of her plan had successfully been carried out, ie, initiate hostilities without immediately dying, now came the second step of her plan; Get Madara to monologue. Now that they had both exchanged a series of blows, the rules of general grandstanding dictated that Madara take a few seconds to.... grandstand.

In a one on one fair fight, Sakura understood that her chances of beating Madara were slim, to say the least. Which was why she’d have to catch him off guard, like black zetsu, and earlier, Hashirama Senju had. 

Even as she thought about it, something nagged at the back of her head, an intuition that screamed out that something was very, very wrong. Unwisely choosing to ignore the voice as nothing but blind panic, Sakura took a second to catch her breath, looking at Madara’s face warily, trying to glean the color of his eyes from her peripheral vision. 

She was not so stupid as to look the Uchiha in the eye. Any semi competent shinobi knew not to look the sharingan in the eye. Only the absolute dumbest, most thoughtless, knuckleheaded- she stopped subconsciously insulting Naruto and focused on Madara, waiting for him to start talking.

Madara was no longer there. She blinked in confusion as he materialised before her, seemingly having covered the distance in the millisecond that her eyes had closed to blink. Cursing internally, Sakura attempted to move, her eyes widening in terror as she noticed the tree roots coiled around her legs. 

There was a sharp, piercing pain as Madara’s hand moved, a black rod extending from his grip, and Sakura’s mouth froze in a silent scream as broke the skin with no perceived resistance, feeling the pain shoot through her abdomen. As a medical shinobi, she blearily knew, judging from the point of entry of the rod that was now sticking out of her stomach, that it had almost certainly pierced the spine.

Sakura felt a second onslaught, this time on her mind, as Madara’s overpowering chakra overwhelmed her system, using the black receiver as an entry way. She was paralysed. Maintaining any degree of lucidity through that pain took an ungodly amount of effort, but Sakura was used to putting in ungodly amounts of effort. 

She forced herself through the oppressive haze of Madara’s assault, to examine the wound, and realised with a chill that she was probably also paralysed in the other sense of the word. Curiously, she felt no emotional after-effects. Perhaps that would come later. Only the mission existed right now. 

Belatedly, she realised what her intuition had detected right at the beginning of the battle. 

Madara had not spoken, not a single word, not even declaring the name of his jutsu before using it, something almost all shinobi did unconsciously. He had not mocked or derided or, indeed, opened his mouth at all.

He wasn’t fighting like Madara, with his flair and style and signature pride. He was fighting like a man possessed with the sole aim of ending the battle as quickly as possible.

Sakura realised she couldn’t feel her legs. She tried to move her arms to create some breathing room, and found her chakra utterly disorganised under Madara’s continued attack.

Madara wove hands signs and new tree roots burst upwards, wrapping around her and tightening... tightening...

As they wove across her face and she struggled to breathe, Sakura strained her eyes to catch a look at Madara’s face before the roots covered her altogether. She couldn’t feel her arms now either.

Sakura held on, though every sense in her body was screaming to just let go and be free of the pain. She remembered Shima’s words. Master Jiraiya had chosen to go down for the greater good, knowing what it would cost him.

Right now, she understood better than anyone else how he had probably felt, mortally injured by Pain, but refusing to let go.

Sakura had to hold on, gather as much intel as she could convey, before she reached her limit.

As the narrow window of light dimmed and her world began to darken and unfocus, Sakura reached for her chakra, which continued to move in disarray, Madara’s own chakra preventing it from marshalling in any substantial quantity. 

The pain was so overriding... No. Though it screamed in her ears and drowned out everything else, Sakura pulled her mind together by sheer force of will. She had to make sure this was all for something. She had to make it all worth it.

Struggling against the world, the world’s most powerful shinobi, and her own system shutting down, Sakura forced her eyes open and found Madara’s eye staring back. 

His eye, the one that wasn’t covered by his hair.

It was utterly and entirely lifeless, devoid of any spirit at all.

Sakura’s eyes closed and she sighed, content, as the roots constricted, and with the cracking of bone, a stout tree stood in the middle of the ruined room, leaving no sign that anyone else had ever been there.

Madara made a tiger seal with one hand, and the tree burst into flame, flickering in the dusty half-light. Smoke drifted out from between the branches, vanishing as it came into contact with the dusty air of the room. 

He stood there for a few seconds, waiting for the tree to burn out into a charred wooden husk, before wordlessly walking back to the hole in space time he had been standing guard over, and resumed his position of vigilance.

From the floor above, Lady Shima and Katsuyu exhaled together, Shima reminding herself firmly that Katsuyu was a friend and not to be considered edible, no matter how succulent the slug looked. Trying to take her mind off her stomach, she turned to Sakura. 

“So? Did you learn anything useful?”.

.

Progress log Roh zero nine

The rate of consumption remains stubbornly at one eye per Izanagi cast. There appears to be no way to circumvent or substitute this requirement with anything else, even identical chakra patterns. I can only assume it is some sort of biological component of the original eye itself that is more than just chakra.

It would be ideal if we were able to simply grow new sharingan. Ah, that such a thing were possible.

Unfortunately, the only cells that differentiate so easily are Hashirama’s, and zetsu’s since they were modified with Hashirama’s. I hardly need a bunch of Hashirama eyeballs floating around, do I?

The though has occurred to me to create an army of hashirama clones, but such a thing is useless when the clones possess no actual expertise in the art of the shinobi, and training them would take too long. It’s far easier to simply gift existing ninja with the wood style, and have zetsu control the army of zetsu clones who are also similarly outfitted.

A scientifically minded person listening to these progress logs, which I record for the sake of posterity of course, might be inclined to ask why I do not simply clone as many Uchiha as I can, and simply harvest their eyes? 

I have tried. It is impossible. None of the Uchiha genetic material is capable of producing a clone independently. The only Uchiha clones that survived were the ones I modified with Hashirama or zetsu cells. 

Unfortunately, this dilution of genetic material prevents the manifestation of the sharingan, which appears to be something of a recessive gene.

We were unable to awaken any of the eyes grown in this manner, which leads me to believe that those eyes simply never possessed the sharingan to begin with.

And so we ended up with a bunch of mentally inactive Uchiha-Senju amalgamtes and several cubic litres of spare eyes for our trouble. What a waste.

Returning to the subject of this progress log, there appears to be no possibility of getting around the one eye per jutsu limit of the Izanagi. 

I do not know what this genetic component is of the jutsu, this thing that seems to supersede mere chakra manipulation or production, and so I shall tentatively call it the sixpaths for now. I cannot think of any other power that cannot be artificially reproduced. 

However, I have been able to master the manipulation of how long each Izanagi lasts, with the application of artificial chakra modulation and generation.

It is possible to maintain the jutsu indefinitely with the appropriate chakra supply and manipulation, which implies that even just one eye should be enough to rewrite history as far back as I like.

The only challenge left now is to discover how to get the jutsu to take effect retroactively. I now divide my time entirely upon experimentation and research into the Ninshu texts. I cannot shake the feeling that somewhere within those tomes lies the answer that I am looking for.

The secret to rewriting the past lies within this jutsu, I just know it. 

It is only a matter of time before shinobi history will be as putty in my hands.

.

Kazuma watched impassively as the cell door was unlocked by #1, and Mizuki was carried within and deposited next to Kitetsu. He felt a somewhat uncharacteristic twinge of guilt as he beheld Kitetsu’s mangled state, and it didn’t help that the man had started screaming the second the inverse field that insulated the cell had been broken when the door had been openend.

Irritably, Kazuma quashed that feeling. None of these things would have even happened once the timeline had been re written. There was no need to feel guilty now. 

Kazuma decided that once he had established his empire over the shinobi world of the past, he would personally find Kitetsu and make sure he lived the rest of his life safe and happy, in the lap of luxury even.

There, all better now. ‘That good enough for you?’ he thought angrily at the last vestiges of his conscience that had foolishly made their presence known. Cowed, they vanished into the recesses of his mind. Nothing can vanish with quite as much apparent guilt as a guilty conscience, save perhaps a guilty politician. 

Kazuma suddenly felt a sharp spike of excitement, and resisted the urge to break out smiling. He identified immediately that it was emotional spillage from zetsu’s mind. “Could you please quiet down?”, he angrily broadcast mentally. The reply arrived on his arm computer. 

Zetsu was predictably smug about Kazuma’s usage of their mental link. “Wasn’t it your idea to use these computers instead of our minds to prevent ‘emotional contamination’ or whatever you called it? What’s wrong, Kazuma? You miss me that badly?”. 

Kazuma closed his eyes, his patience being tested once again. He could just imagine the smug expression on zetsu’s face. Once this was all over and they were in the past he would eat an entire five course meal, and take enormous pleasure in how queasy the secondhand digestion would make zetsu.

Since their separation, Kazuma and zetsu often inadvertently ended up sharing their sensations and experiences, having merged on a deeper level than just the physical. Chakra was a powerful unifying force, after all. Thanks to this he knew exactly which sensations zetsu found the most unpleasant, and how to exact the most satisfying petty revenge.

Even as he thought of it, he heard zetsu’s voice in his head. “Alright alright”, he heard it say placatingly. “You don’t have to be like that, Kazu-chan”. Kazuma scowled, embarrassed even though he knew that no one else could hear any of it. 

“I know how important the ‘Two Great Battles’ are. I want them dead as much as you do, after all. I won’t disturb you, go on and have your fun. And good luck!”, he said impishly before going silent.

Kazuma opened his mouth and realised that some of his thoughts about petty revenge must have leaked across their mental link to prompt zetsu’s apology. 

He closed it, slightly miffed at being caught off guard, before shaking it off. Zetsu was a pain in the you know what, but he could be counted on to come through where it mattered. Kazuma would have never made it this far without him. 

He didn’t spend so much as a second worrying about the safety of the chakra production facility, despite knowing that Mizuki’s presumably powerful associate had gone after it. Such was his implicit faith in zetsu. 

It wasn’t a trust that lived on mere strength or lack of choice, though it may have started out that way. It was a trust that was based on mutual understanding.

The door of the cell closed with a clang and a beep, bringing Kazuma out of his contemplation. Kitetsu had ceased his agonised yelling and was now curled up in a ball, whimpering. Mizuki was, if he was lucky, adrift in the land of dreams. 

Kazuma turned around, licking his lips. “You two stay here and guard the cell. Any change in Mizuki’s condition and you are to alert me immediately”. 

The dynamic duo consisting of #1 and #2 nodded. #2 idly wondered whether taking the narrative backseat was a good thing or a bad thing for a background character. 

.

Sasuke tensed. Kazuma had specifically instructed his guards to stay behind. His chance was close at hand.

Sasuke wondered what it was that made Kazuma so confident in his ability to defeat him.

One did not spend years in the company of the likes of Orochimaru without developing a razor sharp sense for danger, and a deeply rooted layer of healthy suspicion. 

Sasuke had already seen one hidden camera in the rocky cliff up on the surface. He had assumed from that very moment, that until proven otherwise, every surface in Kazuma’s dust laden hideout was bugged. 

Sasuke had known from the second he had entered the cave, that Kazuma possesed some means of detecting him even in hiding. 

This assumption had primarily stemmed from the moment that Kazuma’s man had brazenly announced to the hidden mist anbu that their stealth meant nothing to him. A seemingly harmless little taunt, but in truth a foolish blunder on his part, one that had given Sasuke a vital piece of intel on Kazuma’s abilities. 

He felt it safe to assume therefore, that Kazuma had figured out some way to penetrate even the most meticulous transparency jutsu. The Mist were no slouches when it came to stealth and assasination. Memories of how silently Zabuza had been able to move still made Sasuke shudder. 

So he had waited and observed, knowing full well that he was being waited on and observed in turn. He watched Kazuma battle Mizuki, devoting some thought as to how exactly Kazuma was able to penetrate his jutsu so easily, but eventually decided that the answer was unimportant. 

The man had already demonstrated proficiency, indeed, even mastery, of the sharingan. With someone like that, nothing was too far fetched. For all Sasuke knew, Kazuma had an arm full of embedded eyes like Danzo had, with byakugan instead of sharingan. Or perhaps he had rigged every square inch of the hideout with motion sensors. Or maybe his silver eye was actually some sort of mangekyou byakugan.

Before that day he would’ve laughed at the phrase, but after watching his father’s eye turn up in Kazuma’s eye socket, it suddenly wasn’t so funny anymore.

Whatever the case was it was clear that the answer would not be arrived at through mere conjecture, and so Sasuke desisted. 

Something gave Kazuma the absolute confidence that he would be able to defeat Sasuke. Otherwise he would not have baited Sasuke for so long, refraining from making a move even when he had the upper hand, surrounded by his army. 

Sasuke knew he was walking into a trap. He understood that doing so anyway, especially when the foe involved was as dangerous as this one, was foolishness bordering on Naruto levels of recklessness.

However, Sasuke absolutely had to see exactly what Kazuma possessed that made him so confident. If he had invented some incredibly powerful weapon capable of ensuring certain victory even against the rinne sharingan, it was vital Sasuke learn about it to ensure that a similar weapon would not dominate the world unopposed, if some other malcontent arrived upon the same technique someday. 

And all that besides, Kazuma still needed to be taken down, for the safety of the world and the hard wrought peace that hung so precariously by a thread, and whatever his secret weapon was, it needed to be destroyed.

Sasuke moved, following Kazuma, contuining the charade where Kazuma pretended to be unaware of Sasuke’s presence, and Sasuke pretended to be unaware of Kazuma’s awareness. 

A classic case of “They don’t know that we know that they know we know”. 

He had to find out exactly what Kazuma was hiding, and destroy it for good if it threatened the world that Naruto had given life and, quite literally, limb, to save.

The end was so close he could almost reach out and touch it.

.

Sakura put a hand to her chin where she crouched on the wall, biting her lip as her mind raced.

“I learned quite a lot, actually”. 

The battle had indeed given Sakura a lot to think on. Madara’s utter lack of personality, his entirely uncharacteristic and impersonal method of combat. His choice to go directly for the kill from the get go. All of it was highly puzzling, and led to a singular conclusion.

Sakura had shuddered as the memories of her shadow clone had rushed into her head, filling her with vivid images of motion, sensations of pain and heightened emotion. Sakura had wondered how Naruto tolerated experiencing this a thousand times over every time he conjured up an army of shadow clones to fight some foe or the other.

She internally made note to thank Naruto for teaching her the shadow clone jutsu, once this whole mess had been sorted out. Maybe she would treat him to ramen as a thank you gift, but on second thought, dismissed that plan as giving Naruto the wrong idea. But then again, the jutsu had just proven an invaluable source of intel. 

Truly, it was an unparalleled means of gathering information on a foe of unknown ability. 

Sakura would never be able to use it like Naruto did, both in terms of number of clones he could make and sustain at a time, nor in his ease of use and timing with the clones, but it was certainly a tool that had the potential to be a game changing one if used intelligently. Especially by a strategist who could figure out how to get the most use out of it.

The image came to her unbidden as she pondered her new plan of attack, the last thing her clone had seen before it had been dispelled. 

The image of Madara’s blind, blank-white eye.  
This madara was a very different one from the one she had fought two years ago.

For starters, it appeared that this Madara was not even... awake, in the common definition of the term. 

Though his eyes were open and his combat prowess seemed as deadly as it had ever been, he uttered no word of recognition or threat, did not gloat or grandstand, went into no tangents about how the skills of shinobi had faded into weakness since the days of Hashirama, and indeed, did not even declare his jutsu.

Two years ago, Sakura Haruno had known as much about the reanimation jutsu as any old Tom Dick and Kakashi. Then the great war had happened, and everyone had been forced to relive the deaths of those they failed in life, and suddenly the reanimation justu was an S rank threat that occupied the center stage of the post-war shinobi world.

Though still a forbidden justu, no village or shinobi ever wanted to be caught off guard by such a thing, in such a vulnerable manner, ever again. And so the highest level of every village began to train and educate their shinobi in the recognition, study and defeat of reanimations. 

Naruto, Sakura, Lee, Kiba, Choji, Shikamaru, Kakashi, Guy and many others had been vital sources of information on how to take on and defeat reanimations, and exactly what to expect when facing one.

Sakura knew that they possessed limitless chakra via a direct connection with the other world, the source of all chakra. Their only limit being how much of that chakra they could channel through the bottleneck of their reconstituted chakra network at any given time.

She also knew that the only effective methods of defeating a reanimation, were truthseeker orbs, and high level sealing jutsu, like the reaper death seal or the great sand burial jutsu. 

To make sure that no shinobi unit was ever unprepared against it, a small number of jutsu tags containing high level sealing jutsu had been made a mandatory part of every jonin’s equipment, and Sakura rummaged in her pack for the three that she had been issued. 

All she needed to do to win this fight was to land just one of them on Madara, and his connection to the pure land would be broken, his reanimation rendered disabled. 

There was one other way to dispel a reanimation, but that was one with such a low level of battle-reliability that most shinobi discounted it altogether; To get the reanimated shinobi to let go of their regrets, and find peace.

As she carefully tucked the seals in her gloves, rolling up one in her left hand, she recalled what else Kakashi had told them during the seminar on facing reanimations that all jonin had had to attend after the war.

Apparently both their level of consciousness and their actions could be controlled by the caster of the jutsu. 

The caster could, like Orochimaru had, suppress the consciousness of the reanimated shinobi, while still controlling the actions of the reanimation through an animating tag wrapped around a kunai. 

A simple set of instructions that the reanimation would follow as best as it could, with its mind operating purely within the bounds of those instructions. 

However, the caster could also allow the consciousness to awaken, while still maintaining control over the actions of the revived shinobi, forcing the reanimation to go through the disorienting experience of not being able to control their own actions.

She recalled that this was what Kabuto had done with his army in the great war, remembering Naruto’s vivid recounting of his experience of battling the Third Raikage. 

She still found it difficult at times to process that Naruto and Sasuke and even she herself, had gone up against figures out of story and myth, figures like the kage of the elder days, figures like the rabbit goddess of legend, mother of the sage of the sixpaths, and had actually WON. 

And now here she was again, contemplating how to bring down a man that had quite literally put the entire world in a genjutsu.

So Madara was not awake. Of course he was not awake. Reviving him alone was an act of foolishness of breathtaking scale. Did Kazuma not recall what had happened the last time Madara had been revived?

It seemed that Kazuma’s method of ensuring that Madara did not simply break the jutsu like he had before, was to have him operate in his sleep, animated only by the tag in his head. 

Sakura was unsure whether this would make her job easier or harder. 

From what her clone had seen, Madara was capable of using his usual arsenal, and with even less hesitation than he normally would. However, there had to be a definite downside in having to fight without the tactical genius that being asleep robbed him of. 

Whatever the case, her assessment led her to the same conclusion as before. A direct strategy would never work.

One advantage she definitively possessed, was the one her clone had seen before its death.

His eyes were sightless. No Rinnegan, no sharingan. It was all sharin-gone. Used up by everything he had done right up to the point where he became the human host of Kaguya Otsusuki. 

She didn’t know why his reanimation hadn’t been reborn with healed eyes, but she supposed that if his very chakra had been burned up in what he had used it for, bringing that chakra back into the world wouldn't magically regenerate the parts that had been consumed. 

She reminded herself that he would probably still be able to use several of his ocular abilities, like the Susanoo’, which he had conjured when he was blind. But still. Sakura was certain there were some techniques that could not be accessed without the rinnegan. Techniques like the almighty push and universal pull, at least. 

Something tugged at the back of her head, something about the way that Madara had died towards the end of the war, and remembering what had happened the last time she had ignored that warning, she chose to listen to it. 

The memories came rushing back, of Madara lying on the ground, talking to the First Hokage. His softly spoken last words, and his final farewell. 

Refocusing on the present, she wondered why her mind had chosen to bring that to her attention. Deciding that she’d get it when she got it, she re examined her plan of attack.

Three sealing tags. Three chances to beat him for good, after which she’d have to properly investigate that portal. 

She had considered simply ignoring Madara in favour of prioritising entering the portal, but the mere thought of allowing Madara Uchiha to remain a player on Kazuma’s field was one she could not ignore.

She would never forgive herself if she chose to let Madara be, only to have him attack Naruto or join Kazuma’s invasion and wreak havoc on the rest of the world. 

He needed to be taken out of the game, then and there.

Inhaling deeply, Sakura shared the details of her plan with Shima and Katsuyu. The ninja animals listened intently as she spoke, assuming brooding and thoughtful expressions respectively.

The hissing of steam and the soft, odd hum of the portal grasping at reality’s edges filled what would have been silence, as they considered it. “Basic, isn’t it?”, said Shima finally. 

“I’m trying to keep it as simple as possible so that we can adapt it to any turn of events. There’s still too much about this whole situation we don’t know. The plan needs to remain viable even if the situation changes suddenly”. 

Shima closed her eyes as Katsuyu opened her mouth. “It’s not ideal, but then again, Lady Shima, nothing about this situation is”. The toad assented, turning back to Sakura.

“Are you sure about this, child?”.

Sakura nodded, a determined expression on her face. “Even if it does fail, we’ll still have one sealing tag left over, so we won’t be left high and dry if Madara outsmarts us somehow or uses some new technique he didn’t in our earlier battles”.

As one, the trio turned their gaze downward, where Kazuma’s automated Madara security system idled before the portal. 

“Here we go”.

.

Kazuma walked toward the room’s other exit, whistling somewhat lightly in an attempt to mask his nervousness.

Sasuke followed him silently, correctly deducing that the time had finally come for the two of them to do battle.

A voice followed them both, a broken rasp of a broken man, clinging to the only thing he had left.  
“L.... Lord Kazuma!”

Kazuma stopped, recognising it. “Ah, Kitetsu. Welcome back to the world of the living, congratulations on your successful assignment”.

He walked back to the cell, #1 and #2 turning around, matching his pace.

Sasuke fumed silently. It was almost as if Kazuma was taking some sort of petty pleasure in making him run around according to the man’s whims and fancies.

Hiding the petty pleasure he derived from making Sasuke Uchiha jump to his tune, Kazuma examined Kitetsu’s broken form, reaching for his arm computer as he did so. 

“Progress log Beta 251, subject 722, Yamada Yuuki of the hidden stone, codename Kitetsu. Subject was able to last approximately seven days before his body was overwhelmed by Hashirama Senju’s chakra”.

He paused, examining Kitetsu, bringing up camera feeds from within the cell. Kitetsu had opened his mouth as Kazuma had approached, but had shut it again once the man had started talking.

“Subject’s body underwent structural collapse about... two days sooner than postulated. I cannot account for this discrepancy, which is.. troubling”.

Kitetsu’s lips struggled open, sounds forcing their way out. “Y.. you mean... you knew....? This whole t.. time... You knew this would happen? Lord... K..Kazuma?”

Kazuma looked upwards, idly, still speaking into his arm computer. “Further research is evidently merited, as, clearly, cells that do not possess the regulating factor that zetsu gives mine, are simply incapable of resisting the influence of the first hokage’s chakra for more than, apparently, seven days. The zetsu modification that was attempted on subject 722 was clearly, a failure”

“Lord... Kazuma....?”, Kitetsu persisted.

“Oh, yes”, Kazuma finally responded, looking down at Kitetsu, and after a second, grinning horribly. 

“I haven’t been entirely quite honest with you, Kitetsu. I couldn’t care less about your pathetic little family and your pathetic little life. A weakling like you, who was nothing before I made you into something. Just what exactly can you do on your own, hmm? When I was cast down I got back up and made myself into the most powerful being on the planet. You? You were a waste of human flesh before I gave you something to live for, lost as you were in your depression. 

When I return to the past and make this world mine, I think I shall replicate this line of experimentation on the you of the past, and detect exactly where my calculations are going wrong. After all, one rarely gets the chance to use the exact same test subject again”.

The struggles of his conscience nothing but a distant memory, Kazuma’s grin widened, showing teeth.

Kitetsu wavered, struggling to stay upright, as he processed Kazuma’s words. “B..but.... my lord.... you promised... my son... my husband...”.

Kazuma laughed. “In a world ruled by me, they’ll be better off than the world we currently inhabit, anway. That wasn’t a lie. I’m not going to go out of my way to find them, meaningless as they are. I just said what you needed to hear in order to ensure your compliance as my soldier and test subject, and look how marvellously that went, eh?”

He gestured to the wall of screens, where the swarm of shinobi on the surface of the village had resumed moving with deliberate purpose. 

“It turns out that people will believe just about anything if you show them a few miracles. Ha. Idiots”

Kitetsu was gasping for breath now. “You... lied.... to.... me...”.

“Oh, you fool, there was no lie”. As he spoke, he moved over to the wall of screens, bringing up a surveillance feed of the outside of the tunnel where Kitetsu had battled Chojuro. The stone was littered with wreckage and wooden shrapnel, and the bodies of unconscious mist anbu. 

Sasuke’s eyes widened as he made out Chojuro lying before the tunnel entrance. The man had been fine when he had left him. Something must have happened in the interval after Sasuke had left down the tunnel to the Ash.

Kazuma spoke as he fiddled with buttons on his console. 

“You simply assumed I’d go and save your silly little family and you’d all live happily ever after. I told you exactly what all of this was for, right at the very beginning, didn’t I? To get me into the past, with all the knowledge and technology I currently possess. And that’s exactly what I’ll do!” 

#1 and #2 did not react to the boss’s seeming betrayal of one of his own men. Their logic was simple. The man had failed Lord Kazuma, and so was no longer deserving of his trust. All they needed do was refrain from failing.

Of course, the fact that they had been set up to fail from the very beginning by being subjected to a technique that was always fatal, did not cross their minds.

His fingers flew over the keyboard, and a warning popup appeared, emblazoned with the message, “Explosives armed”.

“I will arrive before the era of the hidden villages, before Hashirama and Madara were ever even born, and unite the world of warring factions under my fist. I will live forever, thanks to my unique physiology, and end war as a concept, permanently. 

I will turn the world into one that no longer lives in fear of angry gods destroying everything on a whim!”, he said, pushing a button, as he decided to dispose of the already beaten Mist shinobi, on a whim.

There was a second of deafening silence, and then yellow and orange bloomed on the screen, the feeds fizzling from the sheer force, as explosion after explosion wiped out the sleeping mist anbu, the rock face above the village trembling slightly as dust showered down from the force of the blasts. 

Kitetsu stared at Kazuma with the same horror that was engraven on Sasuke’s face as the Uchiha stared at the screens. 

The mist shinobi had perished right in front of his eyes. Sasuke could hear his blood rushing in his ears, filling with an almost unfamiliar emotion. Rage. He gripped the hilt of his sword tight enough to shatter ordinary metal, as a silhouette that was unmistakeably Hiramekarei arced into the air, flying through the smoke.

Kitetsu made a noise, that Sasuke took a second to identify as a sob. He looked down, shocked. Kazuma’s men would rather die than squeal, and here one was... crying?

It was indeed a tear that fell from Kitetsu’s eye as he looked up, choking out the words. “I.... I dedicated my..... life to you.... I.... I..... You promised..... my family.....”

He hung his head.

And then Naruto groaned.

Everyone in the room froze, with the exception of #2, who was attuned more to the narrative tension of the plot than the actual tension of the room.

Naruto groaned again.

Kazuma swore and whirled around, Kitetsu utterly forgotten, bringing up readouts on his arm computer hurriedly. “How on earth can he be awake already? He should be out cold. His chakra should have shut down all but the most basic bodily functions by now”.

#1 and #2 looked at each other, confused. They were used to taking their leader’s word as absolute. It wasn’t often he was ever uncertain about anything. They had seen Kazuma make mistakes, of course, but he had never failed to take them in stride.

Naruto mumbled something under his breath, drool spilling from the corners of his lips as he stirred, only a few degrees away from wakefulness. 

The hum of electricity that pervaded the room, Kazuma’s frenzied movement, the flickering of the violet light that illuminated the cells, the blinding rage at losing a friend who he had fought alongside not half an hour ago. These things served to distract Sasuke from paying attention to the noise that would’ve identified the man in the cell as Naruto Uzumaki, as undoubtedly as his whisker markings.

Mizuki was secondary, after all. Right now, Sasuke’s primary priority was taking care of Kazuma, and it was Kazuma he watched, waiting, still waiting, for the man to unveil his secret weapon so that he could get on with it.

Kazuma tapped the screen of his arm computer with some finality, putting his arm down, and closed his eyes. “It doesn’t make any sense”, he muttered under his breath. 

#1 and #2 eyed each other again, listening to the ambiguous noises their prisoner was making, and more importantly, to what their collective Kazuma sense was telling them. 

“Boss?”, said #2 hesitatntly, emboldened by the certainty that a character as memorable as himself couldn’t possibly be killed off in the same chapter as his introduction. “What doesn’t make any sense?”.

Kazuma’s eyes focused on the present as he looked up at them and the cell behind them.

“Mizuki... has just undergone close to a hundred and seventy hours of psychological torture within my genjutsu. His mind should not be anywhere NEAR the slightest idea of consciousness.”

Sasuke sucked in a breath. ‘Close to a hundred and seventy hours’. That was a little over a week, stuck within a genjutsu of untold horror. 

Mizuki might very well never again recover his ability to differentiate reality from unreality. It would be surprising if he ever woke up. It looked like he had been right to let them fight it out. One problem had taken care of the other, leaving only one for him to deal with.

#2 hazarded speaking again, #1 shooting him a glance of admiration mixed with confusion, not understanding what gave #2 the courage to disregard both common and Kazuma sense and open his mouth.

“What did you do to him, boss? In that genjutsu world?”.

Kazuma looked up, irritated at being interrupted. He opened his mouth to berate the guard, but stopped upon remembering that he had an audience present, one who could actually appreciate the intricacies of genjutsu torture efficiency.

“I’m glad you asked”, said Kazuma in a tone far more honeyed than he ever used with his guards. #1’s mouth dropped open as #2 basked in the short lived satisfaction of having apparently said the right thing.

“It was quite a simple method of torture really. Tell me,” and he spoke #2’s name, “You are aware of what solitary confinement is, aren’t you?”. #2 nodded. He may have been something of a fool, but he was no fool. 

“Excellent”, said Kazuma, wondering how the Uchiha would react. “Now tell me, #2, have you heard of the phrase, ‘sensory deprivation’ ?”. #2 scratched his head at that (figuratively speaking), but rallied magnificently under pressure.

“Oh, I do remember reading something about something like that in one of those spy novels, sir!”. Kazuma’s eyebrows shot up in genuine surprise, after he had worked his way through the maze of ‘something’s in #2’s sentence. Apparently #2 was sharper than Kazuma gave him credit for.

“Yes, well, it’s a form of torture where-”, Kazuma began, only to be cut short by #2, who, on a roll, had gotten rather unfortunately carried away. 

“It’s when they lock you in a place and take away all your physical sensations, right? No light, so nothing to see. No sound to hear, nothing to touch or taste or-”.

This was the point at which Kazuma would have lashed out suddenly and without warning, and the story of the precocious #2 would have come to a premature end, saddening #2 fans worldwide. 

It was a testament to Kazuma’s skill that he had been able to kill multiple jonin assigned to be his bodyguards, in this fashion, although it was usually because they didn’t see it coming. 

However, for the first time in his life, Kazuma refrained, not wanting to prompt Sasuke into action until everything was in place. Mizuki waking up early unsettled him just enough to make him think twice about needlessly killing a man who would lay down his life for him anyway.

#1 had already resigned himself to having to shortly clean up whatever would be left of #2, but to his astoundment, Kazuma nodded, still smiling. Of course, someone with as finely honed a Kazuma sense as #1, could see just how forced the smile was. He gulped and stepped back.

“Yes #2, well done. My genjutsu, you see, employed a combination of those two techniques. Complete solitary isolation, and utter, total, sensory deprivation. It’s a very simple thing to enforce in a genjutsu world, but of course, when one can control time within the dream, one must make the most of such a factor. My genjutsu was thus.”

He paused to make sure he had sasuke’s full attention. 

He did.

Which was unfortunate, because this time the name that Naruto mumbled in his sleep was Sasuke’s, which, once again, went unheard by everyone except the wide-eyed stone shinobi sitting chained up next to Naruto’s unconscious form. 

Kazuma continued, wearing a more genuine grin now. “It was quite an ingenius little genjutsu, if I do say so myself. Itachi himself could not have done better”

Sasuke could do absolutely nothing to stop himself from involuntarily shivering at the name. It was still too soon.

“The man Mizuki, was entirely and utterly alone. Not just solitude, you see, no. This was far, far worse”.

Kazuma savoured the words as they left his mouth. #1 and #2 didn’t like having to consume words that had already been savoured by someone else, but months of doing just that had left their proverbial verbal palettes used to the taste. 

“Imagine being trapped within your own body”, he went on. “Unable to move, speak, or do anything at all. Growing hungry, wishing for even just a drop of water after days and days of nothing, and not even being able to scream”. 

#2 shivered, his sense of narrative importance briefly overshadowed by simple, primal, fear.

“That isn’t anywhere near the full scope of what he went through. He was utterly separated, the only man in his own universe, unable to move or speak, yes. But also,” and his voice softened with malice and satisfaction, “Unable to see at all. Unable to hear anything other than the most deafening of silences, unable to smell, unable to feel the sensations of his own body, unable to even breathe”.

Sasuke closed his eyes. Mizuki would probably still die by his hand, but he couldn’t not spare any pity at all for someone who had gone through something so horrendous. He opened them again. It seemed Kazuma was as ruthless as ever. 

Inhumane, and uncaring, he was ruthless to the point of efficiency, wasting no chakra on constructing a genjutsu world when he could simply block everything out to achieve the same level of psychological torture.

Kazuma’s voice rose in volume back to what it had been. “Mizuki was alone in a pitch black world where he possessed no eyes, no ears, no nose or skin to feel with. He suffered not just complete silence, but a complete.... cutoff, of everything. Sensory deprivation on a scale not possible in reality, made possible by the elasticity of dreams. Even a mere minute of being unable to control your own body, to be unable to see, hear, or even breathe. Even just a minute of it is quite unbearable”.

His grin assumed an air of nasty satisfaction. “I put him through a week of that. He’d be screaming for air in the first two minutes if he could scream. Screaming for water after the first two days if he had any mind left to feel the hurt with. A week... well, even I don’t know what would remain of a mind after a week of that”.

Kazuma’s grin faded. “Do not misunderstand, it was not non existence. He very much existed. And an unbearable existence it was”. 

Naruto groaned again, his eyes easing open, and this time, both guards turned to him wearing expressions of unadulterated terror.

“Which is why, you see”, Kazuma continued, “It is just impossible for the man to be waking up right now. He should be gone far too deep to be able to come back”.

Naruto’s eyes were now unmistakeably open, and #1, #2, Kazuma and Sasuke all inhaled sharply as he propped himself up.

Broken laughter sounded from within the cell, and Kazuma frowned as he beheld its source.

Kitetsu grinned, the smile distorted from the unbearable pain coursing through his body. “You...You’ve miscalculated,..... you bastard”, he coughed out. “This man.... will be the end of you”.

.

Progress log Roh X

The very Last.

Here we are at the end of it all, the secret of time travel in the palm of my fist. Or rather, in the hard drive on my wrist. Ha.

As I record this progress log, zetsu has already set off across the world, finding and secreting away shinobi with grievances against the kage that we can exploit. Thanks to him, for all intents and purposes I now possess an information network of the highest quality.

After my modification of the zetsu clones’ chakra signatures, their frequency camouflages perfectly with the ambient chakra of the earth itself. Even a sensory type shinobi would not be able to tell the difference. 

Setting up spores in even the most secure of spaces has proven child’s play. I now probably know more about what goes on in the hidden villages than any of their respective kage. 

Furthermore, this network has allowed us to detect the shinobi who hold the most potential for conversion to our side with unrivalled ease. Being able to listen in on every conversation certainly does allow one to detect the discontentment brewing. Recruiting them after is simply a matter of time. 

After all, what shinobi could ignore an offer to rewrite history?

Of course, I would. I would not pledge myself just so some third party could go back in time. In fact I’d endeavour to actively prevent such a thing, but these fools are desperate. Gullible. They’d clutch at any straw, no matter how thin. 

And so, here we are. Who would’ve thought.

Not even Madara aimed this high. I aim for the very fabric of history itself.

..........

Oh, right. I was lost in thought there, thank you for snapping me out of it, zetsu. Oh, and before I forget, zetsu, could you send one of you to recruit that jonin from the high council of the hidden cloud?

The one you reported yesterday. Remember that time you overheard some of those shinobi expressing anger at having to ‘just move on’, as they put it?

Well, I listened to the footage, and one of those shinobi is actually one of the Raikage’s advisors. We’d benefit from having her on our side. The smarter my subordinates, the better my plans will be executed. 

Anyhow, now that that’s taken care of.  
On to the logging of the progress.

At this point anyone who has followed these progress logs chronologically would have ended up with quite a dulled sense of incredulity, in terms of the impossible happening almost every other day. 

To you, my listener, I say, indeed, most stories and myths become mere yesterdays when you have lived them.

So you can imagine, it would take an entirely different magnitude of impossibility to actually surprise me now, walking impossibility that I am. That being said, I am going to have to ask you to suspend your disbelief for a few moments, as yesterday was no ordinary yesterday, even by my standards.

Yesterday...  
Yesterday, I met the sage of the six paths.

Don’t laugh. What? No I’m not talking to you, zetsu, I’m talking to aspiring scholars who will one day study my rise to- lost interest I see. I apologise for that interruption, and humbly ask that history be kinder to zetsu than I am.

Anyhow, the sage of the sixpaths. The single most awe inspiring presence I have ever been in, and I have been in quite a few, over the last few months.

Forgive me, I am forgetting myself. The context.

It began with the previous entry in the Roh line of experiments, an attempt to apply the Izanagi retroactively. 

As you no doubt already know, I have managed overcome more or less all of the limits imposed by the Izanagi, with the exception of the mandatory sacrifice of the user’s eye.

All that remained for my theory to cross the bridge from conjecture to reality was the retroactive application of the genjutsu. In layman’s terms, to be able to use the jutsu to alter reality, in a manner that reality turns into one, where the jutsu was active earlier than its actual time of activation. 

Bit of a something to wrap one’s head around, isn’t it?

So in effect, the jutsu will not be sending me into the past so much as pushing all of reality, right past me, into the future. Shifting our relative positions in time, as it were.

Now, the Izanagi itself seems to limit its scope to the immediate surroundings of the user, though this seems to be more of a limitation of the user’s ability to control the magnitude of the jutsu.

In my proposed time travel jutsu, I would need to encompass not just my immediate surroundings in the reality warp, but the entire universe in all its vastness, if I am to turn it into the one of the distant past.

Now, this, obviously, would require something approaching an infinite amount of chakra.

How lucky for me then, that the Second Hokage has already invented a way to open pipelines directly to and from the pure land! Fools that they are, no one ever seems to have considered the literally infinite potential that reanimations hold, being nexuses... nexii? Yes zetsu, the difference does matter. 

Each reanimation being, anyway, a nexus of the energies of the entire dimension.

And so, I had designed and set up the appropriate apparatus in order to conduct this most noble of endeavours. The test eyeball belonging to some Uchiha or the other. A zetsu cell connector to link Madara to myself, in order to let me directly access the infinite chakra of the other world, and of course, my chakra modulation system, programmed with the necessary formulae.

I have no doubt that no other intellect on this sad, pathetic planet could have come up with such an ingenius method to alter fate itself to my will.

That day marked the moment I surpassed Tobirama Senju in terms of being the world’s foremost authority on chakra. 

Everything was ready for the commencement of the grand experiment, zetsu had the failsafes ready in order to prevent any injury to my person, and then it happened.

................

Apologies, I still have trouble maintaining my composure, thinking about that magnificent presence.

The Sage of the Six Paths.

I blacked out before I could begin the execution of the jutsu. A highly atypical occurrence for me, I assure you. I awoke within a space I can only assume was my mindscape. No other place, I think, could have been so neatly organised and well sorted. Such efficiency is simply not possible in the real world.

As I began to explore this visual representation of my mind, I felt a presence materialise behind me, and I turned around.

The stories describe him fairly accurately, to their credit, but somehow, despite getting all the physical details right, all of them universally fail to capture the sheer... weight. Of his presence.  
Just being in the same space as him was like standing next to a star with its own gravitational field. Not even Tobirama or even Madara had this sort of effect. Madara was intimidating, true, but this... this wasn’t intimidation. 

I could tell that the Sage felt no ill intent towards me. All I could feel, there in the place where my mind stood before his, was.... I think it was.... sorrow. A deep, ancient sorrow, it felt like. No doubt sorrow at just how badly his descendants had screwed up the world. I felt no fear, standing in his presence. 

I’ve seen the Rinnegan before, of course. All of us have. His was different, somehow. His eyes did not look like an ocular jutsu or kekke genkai. His eyes looked like.. well, they just looked like eyes. 

Just like the color of his skin or the length of his hair, the color and pattern of his eyes seemed as natural an existence as the color of my own eyes or any man’s.

Well. Obviously, my eyes aren’t all that natural anymore, but that’s beside the point.

We stood there for a few minutes, neither of us breaking that most momentous of silences, when the sage finally spoke first.

“Kazuma, my child”, he said, the sorrow in his voice turning into something that sounded like....hmm... pride? His voice itself sounded strangely.. normal. Gravelly, yes, but no more so than any regular voice. 

He went on. “You have come so far in such a small span of time... Your rise has been nothing less than meteoric. None of my favoured children have ever accomplished as much as you have, with as little as you had. Truly, you represent the peak of the era of shinobi. The peak of both mental and physical power. No one could have, nor ever has done better. I am so proud of you, my child”.

An ordinary man may have perhaps become somewhat emotional on hearing his efforts thus validated by an interdimensional cosmic force like this, but I am made of stronger stuff. I accepted the praise as the gospel truth, and carried on.

Will you stop that sniggering, please? You’re ruining the atmosphere of the log. I don’t care if you don’t believe me, zetsu, that’s what happened. 

Ahem. The sage then went on to tell me that I had unlocked the secrets of chakra in a way that had never been done before, rivalling even his own expertise when it came to the manipulation of chakra. This did, I admit, make me somewhat proud, but I think I can say with confidence that it’s a pride well earned.

And then he said... And then he said, “I’m truly sorry, my child. I’m truly sorry for not bestowing you with the favour I so foolishly showed to those idiots -er, no. To those misguided children, Naruto and Sasuke. I deeply regret abandoning you to die on that battlefield, and would like nothing better to rectify that mistake”.

Now of course, I need no sympathy from some high and mighty ghost that sits in judgement of the world as if it’s so much better than everyone else, but only a fool would turn down that kind of help when having it offered on a platter. 

So of course, I graciously forgave the man his most unfair of injustices, and asked him for his favour in recompense for all the wrongs he had done me and my ilk all our lives.

The sage bowed his head in relief, glad, I’m sure, that I chose the path of forgiveness rather than vengeance, for I’m sure he knew better than to seek my enemity.

The relief evident in his voice, he told me that he would give me knowledge, for I already had power aplenty. He would give me the secret I so desired, the knowledge of time travel. 

I was hard pressed to contain my excitement, but maintained by composure before the sage. It does not do to disgrace such a favour by acting in a manner unbecoming of the Sage’s chosen.

The sage told me that though my ingenius plan to tap into the limitless power of the pure land was, indeed, ingenius, it came with a significant amount of risk to my own person, raw dimensional energy being far more difficult to regulate than the chakra already in the world. He had, instead, he told me, a better and more reliable alternative, the ultimate sign of his favour. 

I listened carefully as the Sage revealed to me the secrets of time itself...... 

.

Sakura moved slowly this time, not making haste. It was clear that the element of surprise was, much like the element of Hydrogen or Sodium, quite a volatile, unreliable thing, at least when it came to Madara.

This time she would rely on timing and skill to keep her alive, though she did not anticipate it being anything approaching the general neighbourhood of easy, or indeed, being in even the same country. 

She had initially wanted to send another clone in to gather more information to work with, but the thought of Naruto up above, battling desperately, all by himself, against whatever diabolical machinations Kazuma had cooked up, turned her stomach and made her decide against wasting more time on intel gathering. 

She judged that she had learned all she could about this version of Madara, this mindless, sightless one, that she ever would, at least from clones. It was time to act.

If Madara sensed her presence, he did not visibly react, standing still before his precious portal. 

Sakura understood at once. It seemed that Madara’s instructions made guarding the portal his highest priority, rather than terminating intruders. 

Sakura wondered what would happen if a reanimated shinobi were given impossible instructions, or something they were physically incapable of. If you told a reanimation to fly, would they jump pathetically? Or just short circuit?

Sakura realised she was zoning out, and zoned back in with a speed that would’ve broken several zoning laws if they actually regulated the speed of zoning instead of boring old civil legislation. 

Madara was waiting for her to make the first move, she was sure of it. His apparent nonchalance was not put on, she realised. He probably simply lacked the mental capacity for chalance of any kind. 

He was nonchalant in the way that a traffic signal is nonchalant, simply incapable of doing anything other than what he had to.

There was an inestimably valuable advantage when fighting against a foe operating on autopilot. Shima had been against exploiting such a thing, as it seemed ‘too easy a way to win’ in her words, and she was suspicious of anything that seemed too easy to obtain. 

Sakura however, had just gone head to head with nine tailed beast automatons, and had come to an understanding regarding their mental capabilities. 

Sakura jumped in and swung, her fist moving in an almost exact re enactment of her clone’s doomed attack.

Acting out his part of the play perfectly, Madara moved as smoothly as he had during the dress rehearsal with the clone, moving out of Sakura’s range, and Sakura exulted internally, her suspicions confirmed. 

The Madara bot would always take the most efficient solution that Madara’s instincts and knowledge offered to the problem, without caring for things like predictability or repetitiveness. If the action had worked once, it seemed that the reanimation would not go looking for a different one.

In other words, when presented with the same problem, a reanimation on autopilot would most likely use the same solution that had worked last.

Like before, Madara’s arms moved, weaving the signs, but this time, Sakura was ready and waiting.  
Her punch had not been so carelessly undirected as it appeared to be. 

She had only acted like her actions were the same as before, and Madara, with no sharingan to see it for himself, did not observe the minute differences in her movements that betrayed her intentions. Her fist was never meant to land on the ground.

Sakura’s arm scythed upwards towards where she knew Madara would move, and reached out.

Madara Uchiha was no slouch. 

One of his arms broke away, mid sign, and reached up to catch Sakura’s punch.

“Oh, you think you can catch this point blank?”, thought Sakura. “Well, let’s see how that works out for you”. Her fist moved with all the force of her perfectly controlled chakra, ready to explode upon impact, and collided head on with the razor sharp tip of a black receiver, honed to a fine point.

The receiver slid into her fist like, well, like a USB drive inserted the right way up on the very first try, and blood splashed onto Madara’s face from her wound, marking his face a dark red.

Sakura trembled, her fist having fallen short of her target. Her arm burned horribly, pierced along its entire length with metal, like some kind of grotesque kebab, as she looked up at the blind eyes of a shinobi who had apparently been on the other end of some serious underestimation.... and smiled, exulting internally once more.

Her second theory had been proven correct. An automaton did not possess foresight or any knowledge of tactics. 

For this reason, it was uniquely vulnerable to the age old strategic tool of any and all confrontation.  
Bait.

The impaled Sakura vanished in a puff of smoke, revealing a piece of shattered stone where she had been, the only remnants of a substitution jutsu, as the real Sakura jumped down from where she had been crouching on the ceiling, her fist pulled back and on a hair trigger.

It would take a few milliseconds for Madara to clear the stone from his arm, essentially rendering that arm useless against this particular attack, as that would be more than enough time for Sakura to make impact.

Madara raised his remaining arm upwards as Sakura fell, the arm itself turning into a bramble of writhing thorns, emerging outwards to meet Sakura in the air.

It was too little, too late. Sakura was already on top of him when his arm had raised to her level, and her fist was well on its way to his face when the arm turned into writhing wood.

There was a noise like the shattering of rock, and a shock wave that blew outwards, sending clouds of dust billowing outwards and upwards, and pieces of stone bouncing off the floor like mercury on a loudspeaker. 

Shima squinted in the pop eyed way that only a toad can, trying to make out the details of the situation.

Lady Shima was a toad who took pride in how well she kept house. Why, she thought, Pa had never had cause to complain even once during his rather extended lifetime, about their house ever needing any sort of cleaning, as she stayed on top of keeping it dust-free and spotless long before it ever actually became necessary. 

Of course, Pa found a million other things to whinge about, but, she maintained stubbornly, dust had never been one of them.

For that reason, she was entirely unused to it in such quantities as it was found in the Hidden Ash, and was by now, entirely sick and tired of the whole affair. 

She struggled to draw inferences from the silhouettes she could make out through the dust, and then realised with a start that the air was clearing far faster than the dust was settling down. She reflected upon it for a second before coming to the conclusion that the portal was sucking it away. 

With the air finally clear enough to make out individual colors, Shima examined the results of Sakura’s strategy.

Sakura hung limp, suspended in the air, held aloft upon a living forest that had grown out of Madara’s upraised arm. The wood seemed to have torn through her, ripping her apart from the inside out and exploding into the ceiling on the other side. 

Shima frowned. She was certain Sakura’s fist had completed the journey to Madara’s head before the wood had had a chance to explode. There was nothing that could make an impact quite as.... disctinctive, as Sakura’s preferred weapon of choice, and Shima had definitely heard the sound of it finding its mark. 

As the dust cleared a bit more, Shima beheld the flickering blue light, and frowned as its implications filtered through her mind.

Three spectral blue ribs hovered before Madara’s face, shrouded in a ghastly blue flame. It flickered in the ashen light, casting a faded blue, ghost-like pall on Madara and Sakura, combining with the dusty air to make the entire scene seem surreal. 

Shima observed that two of the ribs were cracked, a deeper blue light shining through in the places where the bone had fractured.

Shima stared at the sight, calling up her chakra. It was nearly her turn. It would be an unbearable shame if the plan went smoothly until she messed it up. Pa would never let her live it down.

The Sakura that hung above Madara, mangled upon the unforgiving wood, twitched once, and melted into... what appeared to be.... worms.

Shima shuddered, despite knowing exactly what was going on. A slug clone substitution jutsu was not a pretty sight. 

Her mind and stomach were pulling off a balancing act that even Dick Grayson would’ve balked at, swinging between the horror of watching a comrade dissolve, and the sweet, sweet temptation represented by all those delicious looking worms.

She watched carefully as the figure of Sakura.... fell apart, the color of her skin changing into the pale, slimy blue that was the signature color of her lunch- Lady Shima shook her head. No. It was the color of her valued ally, Lady Katsuyu. 

The writhing mass squirmed as slugs began to drip off of it, the main body quickly falling apart into slug shaped pieces of slug.

Madara retracted his hand, re absorbing the forest, but it was too late. 

The slugs rained on Madara, sliming over his face, crawling up his shoulders, falling with soft, wet ‘plop’s as they covered every available surface of his body.

Any human being in possession of their faculties would have spasmed violently in acute sensory discomfort from being utterly suffocated by wet and slimy invertebrates. Of course, some of the more weirdly inclined ones would have spasmed in acute comfort, but the spasming would have been universal.

Madara did not. There was a brief intake of air, as if the universe itself was inhaling, and then, with no preamble, a blast of blue light powerful enough to somehow exert a wave of physical force. 

Shima resisted the urge to shield her eyes, knowing just how vital it was that she be ready to act.

The room seemed a lot more crowded now, with the massive, dark blue construct that had sprung into existence, occupying the bulk of the room with its not insignificant... bulk. 

It reached outwards violently, all four of its arms and both of its heads spasming in some sort of deep rooted reaction to ickiness, one that was seemingly so ingrained in the human consciousness that it arose even in an automaton operating on the subconscious level alone.

Slugs flew through the air with uncharacteristic grace, arcing through the room with an almost symmetric perfection. Shima found her self control sorely tested. Oh, how she regretted skipping breakfast.

She shook her head and smiled despite herself. It hadn’t been exact, but it had all gone well so far. They had successfully triggered the manifestation of the largest Susanoo’ Madara could summon without destroying the plateau.

Shima braced herself against the wall. ‘Here it comes’, she thought, as the fourth Sakura to charge into that room since the start of the battle, charged into the room, faster than any of the ones that preceded her.

She leapt, and struck, quiet, precise, and deadly. The force of an entire hailstorm concentrated in a single hailstone.

Her fist made contact with the Susanoo’ and the Susanoo resisted valiantly for a few seconds before it, like Jiraiya’s self control at a hot spring, first cracked, and then broke asunder, with a noise like thunder echoing through a cardboard tube. Shima was impressed. The girl was probably going all out. 

Sakura meanwhile, was trying very hard to keep her head clear of everything except what she needed to do next. A nagging voice at the back of her head insisted on whispering “Everything is going according to plan”, and she swore at it, filled with a dread that, now that the sentiment had been voiced, the universe would go out of its way to prove it wrong. 

She felt the unyielding surface of the Susanoo’, yield beneath her fist, the full force of her concentrated chakra piercing through. A wall might well be impenetrable, but a force concentrated into a small enough point can do damage far beyond its capabilities than when spread out over a larger area.

What is an arrow to a wall, indeed, but what is a wall to a drill?

The entire Susanoo collapsed, cracks spreading from the point of impact, rippling outwards as the fist continued, ceaselessly moving through solid chakra. With an azure flare of light, what remained exploded outward, temporarily blinding both Sakura and Shima. 

Shima cursed. She needed her line of sight! After all, she was the backup! The redundancy! The contingency in case the first plan failed!

Struggling to make things out in the fading afterglow, she saw Sakura move towards Madara as he fell downwards.

Sakura herself squinted through the too-bright world, lunging at Madara’s falling body. 

Her plan had been simple, but solid. Step 1: Lure in the automaton using a concept it could not comprehend; Bait. Thus immobilise one arm. Step 2: Send in the Katsuyu clone, taking advantage of another concept incomprehensible to automatons; Duplicity. And use that to immobilise the other arm. 

Step three had been to attack him when he was thus immobilised, and force him into summoning the susanoo, but Madara had saved them the trouble by summoning it directly after step two.

That of course, left the final step, which relied entirely on Sakura. 

Shattering Madara Uchiha’s susanoo. 

Katsuyu hadn’t initially believed her capable of it, judging her on her performance during the great war, but Sakura assured her that she had trained and grown since then, and she felt confident in her ability to destroy the entire thing if she put her all into one, focused attack.

She knew that Madara couldn’t regenerate the Susanoo’ immediately if it had been destroyed in such a manner. She was certain that there was a cooldown time before it would be usable again, which meant, for a period of a few minutes at least, Madara would be unable to materialise his best defense against the sealing tags.

Sakura had a precious few minutes to land a tag on Madara, and she couldn’t waste them.

And so she lunged through the air as Madara fell. Surely even the great Madara Uchiha would be disoriented for at least a few seconds on the sudden and destructive dispersal on such a large amount of his chakra?

That theory seemed to be proving true as he fell without turning the right way up, his head facing the ground.

Now was her chance! 

Channeling chakra into her feet, Sakura kicked outwards, using the same technique she had used outside the plateau against the tailed beast clones. Her feet compressed the air they moved, the massive force turning them into shockwaves. It was a far cry from Guy sensei bending space itself, she knew, but it got the job done.

Sakura bolted through the air like a stone from a slingshot, propelled by twin shockwaves, and crashed into Madara, fist first, as the two shot into the ground in a minor explosion of dust and stone. 

Shima strained her eyes as far as toadly possible. Did it work? Was he sealed? This was the golden hour, the precious few minutes with no possibility of Susanoo. The time to act was now.

Sakura’s world tumbled violently as she crashed into Madara. She felt the impact under her hand, felt the tag making contact with the skin of his shoulder, and smiled despite herself.

That was all she had time for before they both hit the floor.

She felt a hard knock on the head, and winced, tears springing to her eyes involuntarily. That would hurt for a couple of days, or at least, until she healed it.

Shaking it off and struggling to right herself in a world that spun around uncooperatively, Sakura got to her feet, observing with alarm that Madara had already done the same. 

Had it worked? Was he sealed? He certainly was utterly immobile. “This damn dust!”, she thought, obscuring everything. “Wait. I have shockwave jutsu now”, she recalled belatedly, forcing her fist outwards in a clumsy imitation of Neji’s focused air compression jutsu.

The compressed air scattered away from her fist as it escaped, arcing outwards in a manner almost, but not entirely unlike Neji’s straight line air palm, blowing away the dust to reveal Madara standing stock still.

Sakura’s heart sank. Of course it had been going too well. Of course it had.

Madara stood, exactly in the same position he had stood right at the beginning of the battle. His back ramrod stright, his one arm crossed on his chest.

Sakura’s heart sank even further as she looked down where Madara’s other arm lay, near his feet. 

It had been neatly torn off, still flaking at the point of removal. Sakura’s first sealing tag sat serenely on the shoulder, the marks of the sealing jutsu covering the broken thing. 

No one could deny that the arm had been most effectively sealed.

.  
Naruto did not feel afraid. He did not feel despair. He did not feel desperation. 

He did not feel at all.

For the longest time, there was simply… nothing. Not just a lack of feeling. Just, nothing. 

He saw nothing, heard nothing, smelled nothing, felt nothing, and could not move his arms or legs or indeed, anything at all.

There was not darkness, no. There was nothing at all. Not the black that the mind pictures upon reading the words, “It was a dark room”, but rather the black that the mind pictures when it beholds an empty page.

Not the misery of sorrow, but the dead, numbness of depression. An emptiness that was not a void, but a vacuumn.

The emptiness went on, and on, and on. Only one thing existed in that dark dimension, and it was time. But not even the greatest sorceror would find themselves able to bargain their way out of this one.

The seconds marched by, and then the minutes passed, may they rest in peace, and the hours went by, somewhat self importantly, it must be said, and then the days went by, and soon it was almost a week.

Contrary to Kazuma’s belief, it was not any form of existence that fell within the definition of the word.

And then, suddenly, there was something… else. Something foreign to that universe, something that did not fit within the framework of laws that governed its existence.

It was sound. And also affection, and concern, and anger and desperation and love. It screamed out across the void, an inhuman sound from an inhuman source, yet full of the most human thing it is possible to feel.

The sound, the maelstrom of emotions, reached out into the darkness, and gave Naruto form. It gave him a name, and robbed from him the gift, and burden, of non existence. 

Naruto began to be dimly aware of things. Dimly aware of himself. Dimly aware of…. Feeling. Dimly aware of being alive and awake. He opened his eyes and in a blaze of light, and he could see.

He could see something bright and orange, feel soft fur under his fingers, hear an all too familiar cry of despairing rage that had for so long torn against the fabric of the world in anger.

And he felt the warm comfort of a partner he trusted with his life, and nestled into Kurama’s fur, eyes closed. He didn’t know what the situation was, or what was going on outside their mindscape, but right then, he was absolutely certain that everything was going to be alright. 

The sound had ceased, and he felt the weight of Kurama’s hand settle on his back, massive as it was. They sat there like that as the by now severely exasperated minutes, passed quietly into oblivion. 

Kokuo cleared its throat politely, and Kurama opened one eye and growled. Kokuo looked down, abashed, and Shukaku sniggered, only to have both eight tails shoot him reproachful glances. 

Once several more minutes had passed, Kurama’s hand lifted, and deposited Naruto onto the proverbial floor.  
Naruto stood up, stretched his arms up, opened his mouth, and let out the most impressive yawn to enter the world since Gaara had let himself fall asleep for the first time in over ten years. 

The tailed beasts regarded him, somewhat impressed, only for Killer Bee to get up where he lay on Gyuki’s snout, and let loose an even wider and louder yawn, a prolonged elongation of the phrase ‘fooooooolllllll’.

Naruto was impressed, so it took him a second to realise that things were not how they usually were.

“Hey, wait a second! Octopops! You’re here in my head!”. Naruto’s face broke into a wide grin. “Boy, is it nice to see you!”. Something trickled down into his consciousness. “Wait, were you here this whole while?”.

Bee rubbed a finger under his nose. He brought his hands up as he spat out a verse.“While y’all were cuddlin’ I was here sleepin, All that sentimental stuff gets me weepin’! Fool, you fool!”, he said, in a slightly shaky tone of voice. 

Both Gyuki’s sighed. “As I recall”, said one, “You like to cuddle as much as-”. Bee interrupted him. “Warm displays of affection are the manliest thing a shinobi can give, fool! You fool!”, he said with a passion, tears streaming from under his shades. 

Kurama shook his head, embarrassed that he had the endorsement of Killer Bee of all people. In his experience, ‘cool’ was whichever part of the room that Killer Bee wasn’t occupying. 

Naruto, evidently, did not agree. “You’re damn right, Octopops!”, he yelled with equal fervour, tears streaming down his face in some marvel of involuntary tear duct activation. The duo stood there, each with one arm raised in the air, crying manly tears of passion that would have left even Rock Lee and Might Guy impressed.

Kurama sighed a well practised sigh, the air resigned to sounding resigned, from the second it left his nose. He looked up at his siblings, and froze, utterly thrown by the sight of Son Goku and Shukaku also weeping, one leaning on the shoulder of the other. 

“Ahem”, said Kokuo again, not one to be easily dissuaded from calling attention to matters that urgently required calling attention to. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but Kazuma has taken notice that you’ve awoken, Naruto”. 

The assorted waterworks dried up as everyone tensed up at the mention of the name, though Saiken specifically was more tensed about the usage of the phrase ‘dried up’. 

Twelve pairs of eyes gazed out through Naruto’s into the world he found himself in. They took it in silently, as Kitetsu’s ragged, desperate laughter swept through the mindscape, somehow leaving an unpleasant smell behind. 

Bee grimaced, and then grinned as a verse came to him. “Now that’s way too much damage for just one fool to take, Looking like chewed up gum, make.... no mistake....”. The words died in his throat as he beheld Kitetsu’s mangled shoulder and winced. “What... happened to that fool??”.

Naruto’s expression had set into one of quiet anger. He pointed up at Kazuma. “He did”.

Bee looked up into the disaffected, annoyed face of Kazuma. “So that’s him, then. The big bad boss”.

Naruto nodded. “He can use the flying raijin technique and has some legendary Uchiha’s sharingan in his right eye. I... I think he got me with its genjutsu”.

Bee shook his head. “Just what have you gotten yourself into, Naruto? Fool, you fool? You sayin’ you took him on all by your lonesome?”. 

Naruto frowned. “Of course not! I had Kurama with me! And all the others, too!”. 

Bee’s frown deepened. “And you still lost?”.

Naruto’s grave expression melted into an embarrassed one. “Well.... the thing is... I haven’t really been sleeping all that much... for a while now... and...”.

Kurama’s knuckle reached down and rapped on Naruto’s head, hard enough to leave a bump where it had struck. “You IDIOT! You could’ve died, Naruto! Recklessness is one thing, but that was just foolishness! Of all the harebrained schemes you’ve pulled, that one was by far the most..”.

Naruto had gotten to his hands knees and was frantically pressing his head against the floor. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry....”. 

Their words began to blur together as Kurama’s rant of righteous anger and Naruto’s repeated abashed apologies became noise, discordant enough that even the normally unshakeable Bee’s eyebrow twitched in annoyance.

Bee inhaled deeply, intending to deafen them both into silence, and both Gyuki’s, sensing his intention, opened their mouths to stop him. 

Kokuo cleared its throat once again, at the very end of its tether in having to deal with all these loud, squabbling idiots. How it longed for the peaceful silence of the mountain glade in the springtime, with the only sounds being the rushing of water and the familiar caress of the wind. 

Just as all hell was about to break loose, something much... colder than the fires of hell, interrupted. It was a voice. “How did you do it?”.

.

Sakura’s expression hardened. No time for despair.

“Lady Shima! Now!”, she yelled, darting forwards again, kicking away Madara’s arm as she moved. The battle was far from lost. They still held the advantage of Madara’s Susanoo being temporarily incapacitated, and even better, Madara now had only one arm to defend with.

Madara moved away from Sakura as she half suspected he would, his single hand weaving a sign. 

A few meters away, lady Shima sighted carefully, accounting for Madara’s movement speed, and fired a careful stream of toad oil.

Sakura meanwhile, attempted the same feint she had begun the battle with, doubly cautious this time around, and was almost immediately rewarded for that caution when Madara seemingly anticipated the feint, dodging it with an ease that betrayed its expectedness.

“I see”, thought Sakura. “Even an automaton can pick up on patterns”. Or perhaps that was just Madara’s battle/common-sense bleeding through. 

Madara had moved into the opening left by Sakura’s missed fient, a razor sharp chakra receiver extending from his single arm. Sakura knew that getting impaled by one of those things was an instant K.O.

However, she had half expected the feint to fail right from the beginning, and her other palm had already been moving into a defensive position even as she had attacked, anticipating the counterattack.

Madara’s chakra rod plunged downwards towards Sakura’s exposed torso, filling the air with the buzzing of clashing chakra signatures as it crashed into her waiting palm. 

A palm that was coated with a highly focused layer of chakra, layered proficiently enough to turn aside even a lightning infused kunai.

The black receiver splintered, its edge breaking off as it collided against Sakura’s chakra reinforced fist, and Madara found himself drenched in heavy dollop of toad oil, the missile finding its mark in the span it took Madara to launch his counter attack and have it rebuffed. 

Shima was on edge, even more so than Sakura, who was still in the balanced state of focus and anticipation that the most experienced warriors sink into within the flow of combat. They had already lost one tag. It was vital they nail the attempt this time, without letting it get to having to use their last one.

Madara’s battle sense must have deduced himself to be at a disadvantage, as, still dripping in toad oil, he backed away from Sakura, retreating as quickly as he had struck earlier. 

But Sakura was not going to give up their hard won advantage, tensing her knees in anticipation of the direction that Madara would retreat in, and bounded after him in a leap of chakra enhanced speed that equalled his own. 

Back when Sakura, Lady Shima and Katsuyu were still workshopping their strategy to take down Madara, Sakura had asked Lady Shima about her capabilities, as a matter of inventory.

Shima had told her, everything she could recall at that moment at any rate, and while water style jutsu and a prehensile tongue were all useful and held undeniable strategic potential, the toad oil intrigued Sakura.

Shima had gone into some length about the unique properties of the toad oil of Mount Myoboku. She only had a limited amount of it stored within her body, only enough for perhaps three or so blasts. The oil had a number of unique properties, which it lost if left outside of Mount Myoboku or the body of a toad, for too long.

Sakura learned that the oil held a great affinity for nature energy. Application of the toad oil was the first step in the path to learning the ways of toad sage jutsu. Once in contact with the surface of the skin, nature energy would enter into the body of the shinobi, completely upsetting the balance of their chakra if they were not already proficient in the use of the toad sage mode. 

Shinobi who maintained contact with the toad oil for too long, and absorbed enough energy that their own natural chakra got overwhelmed, would quite literally be transformed into a stone toad. 

That conversation flashed through Sakura’s mind as Madara’s skin began to mottle and wrinkle, his cheeks swelling outwards, taking on a froglike appearance.

The entire thing had sounded bizarre to Sakura, though it fell well within the weirdness of the shinobi world in general. Shima explained that Naruto’s sage mode, the appearance he wore when he entered that state, of the yellowed frog eyes and the orange highlights, represented as near as it was possible to get to perfect mastery of nature energy. 

Ordinarily, even the most proficient of shinobi would not be able to avoid the manifestations of at least some toad like features, and only Naruto and the Fourth Hokage had managed to avoid them altogether, although the Fourth’s chakra reserves were not large enough to merit the delay necessary to enter the sage mode.

Sakura didn’t know much about whether or not Lady Katsuyu possessed some sort of sage mode of her own, and had never asked. 

Lady Tsunade had never brought up the subject, even on their rare visits to Shikkotsu Woods, with learning medical ninjutsu alone consuming enough time and effort to leave very little room for much else. She had learned to fight alongside Lady Katsuyu, and had learned a wide variety of combination jutsu besides, but the subject of any sage mode had never cropped up.

Sakura had brought it up briefly, once, after Pain’s assault on the Leaf. Lady Tsunade had told her that it simply wasn’t worth the trouble of all the necessary meditation and mucking about with nature energy, especially when Sakura had already been straining her chakra with the formation of the creation rebirth seal of a hundred healings. 

Building the seal and meddling with nature energy could not both be done simulteanously, and Tsunade judged the seal to be the more useful of the two.

And sure, the sage mode allowed Naruto to destroy a small mountain with a single blow, but Sakura could do that anyway, and besides, Naruto wouldn’t ever be able to synthesise complex anti venoms or set broken bones or singlehandedly keep a comrade’s heart pumping when the only thing standing between them and certain death was...

Sakura snapped herself out of that train of thought. Naruto had his skills and she had hers, and she was fine with how that had turned out. The days when she was chasing behind Naruto and Sasuke were long over. 

She had to deal with Madara now.

Lady Shima had briefed her on the effects the oil would most likely have on the reanimation, and Sakura could already see them in action. However, the oil did not maintain its properties for very long, outside of those two specific environments, and already Madara’s froggification was slowing.

Whatever the case, it meant that his chakra was under assault from the universe itself for at least a few seconds, and the ongoing toadifying process he was trying to fight would render even taijutsu difficult. 

In other words, he was utterly at her mercy.

Sakura moved with a calculated burst of speed, placing the tag squarely on Madara’s chest, taking no chances this time with limbs that could be torn off. Already the oil was evaporating, but the tag had most definitely been placed, and the reassuring marks of the sealing jutsu, spider webbed out from the point of contact.

Sakura sighed in relief.

It was finally over.

There was a faint rustling, the sound of the wind dancing through leaves. Sakura realised that the room was full of leaves. A slow pain blossomed in her lower abdomen, and she coughed out blood. Blood, she thought. That was never a good sign. That sound was so soothing though…

Her world began to blur as she looked at the porcupine of wood that Madara had become. His body had erupted into tree branches, the leafy growths extruding from every surface of exposed skin, radiating out in all directions in a starburst of tangles, like a whole forest that had been squashed into a single tree. 

She followed the twisting path of one such branch somewhat dreamily, tracking its path as it twisted through the air and through the blood soaked spot on her clothes. 

Realisation slowly filtered through. ‘Ah. I’ve been impaled’. Followed by ‘I must be in shock’. 

The shreds of what remained of the sealing tag floated on that breeze. Sakura thought she might have heard a disctinctively amphibious voice screaming on that wind, but the sound was so jarring she found it hard to pin down its source. She knew she knew that voice. Heard it before somewhere.

There was another voice in her head. One that was yelling in a tone as urgent as the one outside her head. Something about snapping the hell out of it. Sakura felt a slimy something crawl up her arm, and shivered involuntarily before beholding the familiar shape of Lady Katsuyu. Both the screaming voices had quietened down.

Katsuyu slimed over to the branch impaling her, and spat acid at the point where it connected to the greater forest. Sakura couldn’t see it, but Lady Shima had hopped frantically to where she stood, and now hopped urgently in place behind her, waiting for the front part of the branch to dissolve. As it did, she raised her arm, and brought it down firmly on where the branch extruded from her back.

A mass of slugs slimed into one another, forming into a larger version of Lady Katsuyu, who caught Sakura before she hit the ground. The trio began to slime away from Madara, focused now solely on damage control.

“I.. don’t get it”, murmured Sakura. “How-” she coughed. “The toad oil…. How’d… he…”.

Lady Shima shook her head. “His chest. Look at his chest”. Sakura turned her head as the forest began to resemble the shape of a man once more, Madara standing up from the kneeling position he had been forced into by the recoil of the branches. 

It took a minute for Sakura to register what had changed. The face that Madara wore upon his chest. The visage of Hashirama Senju. It had changed. Dark markings now covered its eyes, reminding her of Naruto’s sage mode highlights. The lines flowed from his eyes down his cheeks and into his hair, and a dark circle within another circle had manifested on its forehead.

Shima was muttering under her breath. “… can use Sage Mode, Madara can use sage mode. Of all the... He just.. he..” she turned to Sakura. “The overload of nature energy somehow triggered the First Hokage’s sage mode, boosting his power instead of scrambling his chakra. I should have seen this coming, I should have… I’m so sorry, child. I call myself a sage and yet didn’t remember the most basic thing about sage jutsu”.

The piece of wood embedded in her stomach moved as Sakura turned back, and all of a sudden, the pain came rushing back, and with it, blinding clarity. Sakura choked back a cry, and motioned for Katsuyu to stop. As the slug stood still, Sakura eased herself off her back, and stood under her own power, rather shakily.

Madara had finished reabsorbing his forest, and now stood, infuriatingly nonchalant, arm crossed, in front of his portal. The closed eyes of Hashirama Senju gazed unseeingly at nothing, the markings covering them accusing Sakura of messing up, messing up, messing up…..

The pain helped her focus. She stopped wobbling, her blood now pounding in her ears. She clenched both her fists. No. She was not going to retreat here. She was the only backup Naruto had. 

“Lady Katsuyu, Lady Shima. We’re taking Madara out of the game, now”. 

The toad looked at her, incredulous. She hopped up onto Sakura’s shoulder. “Sakura dear, you did magnificently, no one can deny it. You landed the sealing tags not once but twice. It’s not your fault I didn’t account for the First Hokage’s sage mode”. 

Her expression softened. “I know that lad Jiraiya chose to fight a battle he knew he could not win, but that was to find out critical intel that ended up saving the village. There’s nothing more to be gained here from fighting Madara now. We were barely able to hold our own against a blind, mindless version of the man. Now that he can sense his surroundings through sage mode, we have even less of a chance than we did before. This is not a battle we can win”.

She looked at Sakura’s face, trying to judge her thoughts from her expression, and found her face infuriatingly opaque. 

“Sakura?”. 

But Sakura was far away.

Her mind had been furiously running, trying to find something, some strategy, that would work against Madara, even as Lady Shima had been speaking, but kept coming up empty. Nothing she could think of would work.

Any sealing tag needed a few seconds to do their job, and that was more than enough for Madara to call up a Susanoo or a forest to remove the tag from his person.

Simply landing a blow would do nothing either, as he was a reanimation, invincible to all conventional forms of damage.

And most importantly, she only had one tag left. Mess this up, and it was game over. 

The branch lodged in her abdomen was a painful reminder of the cost of messing up. Sakura had chosen to leave it in, at least until she could take care of the bleeding properly. Pulling it out now would only leave her to have to deal with both Madara and bleeding out at the same time.

As she dredged through everything she knew about Madara, something rose from the depths of her mind, yelling, screaming at her to remember, connect the dots, remember what had happened. Sakura froze, and Lady Shima sighed a sigh of relief, mistaking it to be Sakura reacting to her words.

Madara’s final words arose in Sakura’s mind once again, unbidden, and she finally understood. She finally understood what her subconscious had been trying to tell her from the very beginning.

Sakura smiled. Shima saw the expression, and groaned as she understood its implications. 

“Child, we are not attempting some last minute, daft idea that your brain came up with in the fog of pain you’re in. We’re retreating for now and reformulating our strategy. Child? Do you hear me?”.

Sakura’ eyes shone with the light of a certainty. She looked down at the toad. “Lady Shima. We don’t have to beat him”. The toad’s expression grew puzzled. “What?”. 

Sakura explained her realisation. Shima’s mouth opened with sheer incredulity at what Sakura proposed. “You cannot be serious”. 

Lady Katsuyu did not possess the facial muscles necessary for expressing a ‘grin’, but managed to convey the sentiment through a series of complex undulations. The art of emoting was indeed an art when it came to slugs, and Lady Katsuyu was a veritable maestro, having had centuries to master it.

Ten minutes of back and forth later, the toad finally, though begrudgingly, agreed to cooperate, calling the plan ‘insane’ and Sakura ‘Even more reckless than that lad Naruto’. 

Sakura was far too caught up in the moment to properly register the comparison, which was why she did not respond with a forty slide powerpoint presentation on why, no, she was nowhere near as rock headed as Naruto, and she liked to think her strategies through instead of jumping in half cocked, thank you very much. 

As it stood, the trio took up their positions across the room, waiting, ever so patiently waiting….

Sakura wished she still had her ninja tools, taken as they had been by Kitetsu. A food pill to numb the pain that was still burning through her stomach would have helped enormously.

The minutes that passed felt like hours to Lady Shima, like minutes to Lady Katsuyu, and Sakura did not feel them pass at all. This somewhat offended the minutes themselves, who are not used to being ignored, which is why they tend to pass faster when one doesn’t notice them passing, leaving in a huff and feeling unappreciated.

The minutes blew by Madara, mildly intrigued at how he seemed to be awake and yet utterly unaware of their passing. 

And so, they passed. 

They were not mourned.

.

Naruto was snapped out of the internal shenanigans of his mindscape and thrown into the real world like a pebble thrown across a lake, as Kazuma’s shaking voice spat out the words once again.

“HOW DID YOU DO IT?? HOW ARE YOU AWAKE? HOW??!!”

Naruto was dimly aware of Bee’s presence leaving his mind, though he didn’t have much time to ponder the implications of Bee’s arrival and departure, caught as he was, in the laser glare of Kazuma’s furious eyes.

“HOW ARE YOU NOT GIBBERING IN CONFUSION??”.

Naruto did not reply, taking the time to ascertain his surroundings first.

His head turned slowly, his eyes scanning the situation and place he found himself in. 

He appeared to be in... some sort of cell. It was certainly cramped enough and lit dimly enough to fit the description. Although it was by far the strangest cell Naruto had ever set eyes on.

The walls seemed to covered in a fine metal mesh that... hummed, softly. Naruto pondered it for a second, before the answer came to him in a flash. Electricity.

The other piece of evidence that clued him in to the fact that he was in some sort of confinement, was the... confinement. His legs were manacled together, the chains running directly into holes in the ground. His hands, surprisingly enough, were free and entirely unrestrained.

His thoughts raced as he considered the implications. Free hands meant hand signs, ninja tools, jutsu.... Which meant.... there must be some other, less visible form of restraint that still rendered hand signs and jutsu useless. 

Naruto gave no consideration to the possibility that Kazuma had simply made some sort of error. Everything he had gathered about the kind of man Kazuma was, was simply antithetical to that idea. 

Kazuma had rigged the entire plateau pre emptively to give him the advantage in any combat fought on his home turf. There were cameras everywhere, and besides, the man wore a screen on his arm and wires in his eyes. 

Kazuma liked to prepare. He wouldn’t be caught dead making an error as basic as restraining an opponent but leaving them their jutsu. (Dead wrong twice over, as it turned out, but that’s something for a later battle). 

The racking, coughing laugh that had been croaking out next to him, stopped with a final hack. Naruto side-eyed its source, and tensed up when he remembered Kitetsu, sitting next to him.

The man looked terrible. He looked like he, to invoke a familiar image, hadn’t slept in a week. The formerly in-control, ruthlessly practical shinobi now looked gaunt and worn. His skin hung off his bones, his eyes almost popping out of his lean, ashen face.

His shoulder looked no better than it had earlier. Naruto winced as he beheld the twisted wood-flesh. The murder of the mist anbu norwithstanding, Kitetsu as he was now looked far too pathetic for Naruto to harbor any resentment towards him. He looked.... broken, in both body and spirit. 

Naruto noticed the chains that ran from the manacles around his legs, and his eyebrows furrowed. It appeared Kitetsu had earned Kazuma’s ire somehow. The thought confused him somewhat, as he recalled Kitetsu’s fervent devotion to Kazuma and what he represented. 

What had changed?

Naruto idly registered Kazuma yelling something once again, something along the same lines of “HOW COULD YOU blah blah blah...”, but he zoned it out with the well practiced mental focus of an experienced prankster, who had spent his entire childhood being yelled at by disgruntled old men going “HOW COULD YOU blah blah blah.....”.

Instead, he focused on Kazuma himself. The man seemed pretty much as he had been before their battle, but now that Naruto was able to get a good look at him without trying to dodge frantically, or stay alive, he absorbed the sight of Kazuma properly.

He took in the way his hair reflected the light as if it were made of living metal, the way his eye seemed to glow from within, and the way his skin changed color in mottled patterns below his neck. Naruto did not waste a second assuming it to be any sort of regular skin condition or heterochromia. 

With Kazuma, there was always something more going on than met the eye.

The color and texture of the man’s skin however.... it almost reminded Naruto of the many white zetsu clones he had destroyed over the course of the war...

As Naruto’s mind raced thus, he stopped for a second, feeling none of the fatigue or mental fog that had plagued him thus far and had made it so hard to think. He smiled, relishing the.... ease with which he was able to think. Thoughts, possibilities and conclusions flowed like water, scenarios and actions passing by in a blur. 

Naruto was awake. He was more awake than he had ever been at any point over the last month. But it was more than that. 

He wasn’t just awake, he was alert. He was refreshed. He felt ready to take on a thousand shinobi army and come out the other side without a scratch. He felt confident enough to challenge Shikamaru to a game of shogi. He felt like he could clean out Ichiraku’s entire stock and still not feel remotely full.

He felt more pumped than he had ever been. If sakura or sasuke had been nearby, he felt confident enough to ask her out or kiss him on the spot. Of course, that was all in good metaphor, as he’d long ago realised that neither would have any point, but the fact remained that Naruto felt able to fight several great wars and perhaps run a few marathons after. 

And he had no idea why.

The last few hours weren’t just a blur, they were a proper van gogh of abstract colors and clashing themes. 

The last thing Naruto remembered was fighting Kazuma, and that too was a hazy recollection at best. He recalled a sense of hopelessness, and finally giving in to the fatigue as Kurama and the other eight tailed beasts took over. 

And he remembered, vaguely, an eye. A blood red sharingan, the tomoe beginning to turn hypnotically, his vision fading out just as the pattern began to shift...

He couldn’t recall what the pattern had shifted to. 

Those events were what had led him to the conclusion of genjutsu earlier, back when Bee had asked him about it, but now that he reflected upon the sequence of what had gone down, he realised he couldn’t actually remember anything at all about the actual genjutsu. That wasn’t normal, right? 

He remembered being just barely under the surface of consciousness, vaguely recalling Kazuma monologuing about some Uchiha or the other... after which he could recall nothing at all until the voice of Kurama brought him back to the land of the living, feeling as he did, refreshed and well rested. 

That was another source of puzzlement, but one he was slowly beginning to puzzle out for himself.

Having gained a (he felt) somewhat acceptable sense of his situation, Naruto finally gave Kazuma’s words his undivided attention.

Kazuma’s face was red now, spittle flying from his mouth in a rage uncharacteristic even for him.  
“I ASKED YOU HOW YOU BROKE THE GENJUTSU? HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY BE AWAKE?”.

.

Sasuke had to resist leaping in and finishing off Kazuma on the spot. The man’s cool exterior hadn’t so much as cracked until right now, when the facade fell off entirely to reveal this screaming maniac. He was sorely tempted not to let the chance pass to attack Kazuma while his guard was truly down, but that nagging possibility of that ultimate weapon, whatever it was, stayed his hand.

Moreover, Mizuki had come around. Had he broken out of the mangekyou sharingan’s genjutsu somehow? 

How?

Unless you had considerable genjutsu talent of your own, one would find themselves utterly at the mercy of jutsu on the level of the Tsukuyomi.

If Mizuki had been able to break out of a jutsu that could catch even a perfect jinchuuriki in its web...

Well, that was very.... interesting, to put it one way.

More work for him. As usual. 

.

Naruto closed his eyes and began to think carefully. He could feel Kazuma’s fury radiating off the man like a palpable heat.

Kitetsu was silent, chained as he was next to him.

Naruto pondered Kazuma’s words. How had he broken the genjutsu? He did recall Kurama calling out to him, but had that been it?

He looked up, expression thoughtful, and opened his mouth.

“Your genjutsu. What was it?”.

Kazuma opened his mouth, stood like that for a second, and closed it once more. His fury began to melt away, replaced with a dangerous calm. “What do you mean, what was it? You were stuck within it for an entire week! How can you not KNOW WHAT IT WAS?”, he yelled, his temper breaking again.

“DID YOU NOT FEEL THE SUFFOCATION? WERE YOU NOT TRAPPED WITHIN YOURSELF?”.

Breaths heaving, Kazuma closed his eyes, as if listening to something else, before opening them again, seemingly somewhat more calmly. 

“I did not give you the mercy of non existence. I left your mind fully capable of experiencing the horrors of my genjutsu world. You should remember how suffocating the sensation was, in terrifying detail. The only thoughts in your panicked mind, were there any at all, should have been “CHOKE!” or perhaps, “Too close I cannot breathe!”. The experience should have broken your mind and spirit, leaving you a slavering husk of a shinobi, like poor Kitetsu over there”.

Naruto looked at the man sharply. Was that what had broken Kitetsu?

“Of course”, continued Kazuma, “That wasn’t what happened to him. It was the realisation that he was fighting for nothing, that broke him. The poor man had deluded himself quite well, into thinking he was fighting for anything but me”.

Naruto felt that old, familiar rage boil up again, that feeling he had grown acquainted with all those years ago; A feeling he felt like tongues of flame in his stomach, licking and scorching whenever Orochimaru spoke about Sasuke like some particularly shiny ninja tool. 

He forced it down, stomaching the bile and the bitterness, and focused on the man before him, processing the words he had said. 

Apparently he had been stuck in a genjutsu for a week? A bolt of fear struck Naruto as he remembered with considerable alarm, that the grand invasion had been scheduled for a matter of mere hours after his battle with Kazuma. Had he missed the whole thing altogether?

Shikamaru had been right not to trust him alone with the mission. It was too late, he had messed everything up...

The alarm must have shown on his face, because Kazuma’s rage finally cracked, his face breaking into a grin. “Oh, so you do remember?”.

Naruto looked up at him. “The invasion. Did I miss it? Is it all over?”.

Kazuma’s smile eroded like a canyon carved away by a river, his expression turning thunderous. As his arms began to twitch, his skin began to bubble, causing everyone in the room to do a double take, and a.... head, extruded from his neck, stretching outwards and turning to face him.

“Now now, Kazuma”, it said in a singsong voice that sent both Naruto and Sasuke spiralling back into the killing fields of the Fourth Great Ninja War. “We don’t want to lose our temper now, do we?”.

Naruto’s heartbeat roared in his ears as the flashing carnage of those days rose to the forefront of his mind. “White zetsu”, he said under his breath.

Kazuma’s expression had frozen at the reproach, as he evidently mastered himself, and looked at Naruto with an expression that had melted back into intrigue from the unrestrained fury it had been not a moment earlier. “Curious that you recognise him on sight despite not having fought in the war”.

Naruto did not have a retort to that perfectly reasonable observation, and so did not attempt to give one. Shocked as he was by zetsu’s sudden appearance, he did not see Kitetsu’s eyes narrow behind him.

Kazuma closed his eyes and breathed deeply, quelling his doubt, incredulity and fear. Whatever had happened with Mizuki, there was bound to be a perfectly reasonable explanation for it. All he needed do was examine it closely enough, and the answer would reveal himself. After all, he did possess one of the sharpest eyes in history. He would not be missing anything.

Kazuma inhaled, deciding on a course of action, and employed that honeyed tone he had seldom ever used before the events of that day. 

“No, you did not, in fact, miss the invasion. You’ve only been out for a relatively small while, but spent a week within my genjutsu world. This is because, like I said earlier, I used the jutsu of Fugaku Uchiha’s mangekyou sharingan”.

He spoke as if to a toddler, his face a mask of sweetness. “So now, my dear Mizuki, would you be so kind as to tell me exactly how you managed to negate the genjutsu I went to so much trouble to put you in?”

Naruto’s eyes narrowed, his refreshed mind running now at full capacity, perhaps even beyond full capacity. Kazuma valued information above all else, that much was clear. What he had been presented with here was.... a rare opportunity. He had.... leverage.

“I’ll tell you, but in exchange you have to tell me something as well. You don’t seriously expect me to reveal my technique for free, do you?”.

Kazuma’s grin widened, his teeth gritted. “Do you think yourself in a position to make demands, you insufferable little-”. 

“If the invasion hasn’t begun yet, you have.... what is it now, less than an hour... to declare war on the entire world? Do you think you’ll be able to break me by then?” Naruto interrupted. 

Kazuma’s grin evaporated for the second time in many moments, and the vaporised mirth condensed on Sasuke’s face, forming a small smile of secondhand enjoyment at Kazuma being inconvenienced. 

“The only way you figure out how I did it before you launch your invasion”, said Naruto, “Is if I tell you”.

Kazuma wanted nothing more than to electrocute that smug, smiling little rogue ninja where he sat in his cell, and he could. His finger hovered over the button on his arm computer that would do exactly that, and every other watching prisoner flinched at the sight, the involuntary response deeply ingrained from many, many memories of what followed the pressing of that button.

But the shadow of Sasuke Uchiha loomed over Kazuma like a homework submission deadline, an unforgiving, stark reminder that time was running out... running out... running out.... 

The battle against Naruto Uzumaki approached inexorably, and if his trump card, his ultimate genjutsu were to fail against him.... No. He needed the answer now. His trump card had to be infallible.

If mizuki possessed any resolve at all, it would take a good long while to break him properly, and apparently genjutsu just... didn’t work on him??

Kazuma whirled around and let loose, punching the unfortunate #2 in the gut. #2’s breath left him in an almighty wheeze as he fell to the ground, desperately trying both to inhale, and to puzzle out his exact position in the narrative hierarchy of the overarching story, terrified now that he had overestimated his own importance to the plot. 

#2 needn’t have worried so, as unbeknownst to him, there was quite the plot altering action in his future, one which his continued survival was essential to execute. 

#1, however, unaware of such literary devices, was already mourning his erstwhile companion. It had been a fun couple of days, but this was clearly goodbye.

And then Kazuma straightened up and turned to Mizuki. 

“Very well. You have yourself a deal. Not that it will matter, really. These cells are inescapable, and as soon as my perfect invasion is complete, I shall take great pleasure in cutting you open and examining your chakra system and your memories firsthand, before I depart for the past”.

He paused for a second, seemingly pacified by this alternative. “All you’re really doing is wasting my time, but right now that is an acceptable cost for the information you can give me”.

Naruto resisted the urge to fist pump. He had done it! Successfully leveraged information against a foe. A proper, strategist thing to do. Shikamaru would be proud.

Then the rest of Kazuma’s words filtered through. 

Right now it was an acceptable cost? Right now? Less than an hour before the invasion? Why did Kazuma need this information so bad BEFORE the invasion?

It was almost as if... as if it somehow affected the outcome of the invasion itself....

Naruto wondered at the implication, but could draw no conclusions from merely what he knew of the invasion.

Naruto closed his eyes. He had a chance here, a once in an invasion chance to get some invaluable intel for Shikamaru and Kakashi to use. He needed to choose this question very carefully.

Kazuma waited, doing his best not to show his growing impatience, all too aware of Sasuke waiting above, like the spectre of death come to claim his soul. A slanted, tilted shadow of The end that awaits all and cannot be ignored. So close to the actual battle, it was getting harder and harder for Kazuma to keep his cool. He wouldn’t be able to relax until he had Sasuke exactly where he wanted him. 

Mizuki finally opened his eyes, and Kazuma nearly jumped from the pent up tension. His annoyance at the hindrance that Mizuki was proving to be had grown quite significant, and he couldn’t wait to have the information he needed so that he could lock the man in a hole and throw away the key. At least until it was time for dissection, anyway.

Naruto looked up at Kazuma, feeling the assorted gazes of everyone in the room focused on him. The prisoners in the surrounding cells had gone silent, the air bereft of their moans of pain and despair. They hadn’t seen Kazuma at anyone else’s mercy, ever. No one wanted to miss this.

Naruto opened his mouth. “Who are you? How did your hair and your eye get like that? How did you get this strong and how do you know so much? How is it that you and your army can use the wood style and the chakra of the tailed beasts?”.

Kazuma frowned, but Naruto went on. “Where’d you get that Uchiha’s eyeball? What exactly are you invading for? Why are you attacking the villages if your plan is to travel back in time? And how? How are you going to go back in time? How can something like that even be possible? Where did you even find a jutsu like that?”.

Kazuma closed his eyes, waiting for the tirade to end. “And what the hell is up with white zetsu popping out of your head?!?”.  
.

Sakura winced as she attempted to halt the bleeding as best as she could through the branch still piercing through her like some grotesque butterfly pin. It was nearly time to move, and the last thing Sakura wanted was for her careful, well thought out strategy to be ruined by an inopportune jolt of pain from her stomach wound.

Perhaps calling her plan well thought out would be an exaggeration, she reflected. Truthfully, even careful would be a stretch. It was a last minute, seat of the pants, hail mary of a plan, based entirely on half remembered words from years ago. 

But right then it was the best shot they had, and retreat simply wasn’t an option. 

She could imagine Lady Shima shifting uneasily from where she perched, but had some difficulty visualising Lady Katsuyu doing the same. Imagining the slug emoting was something of a difficult task. 

Sakura gritted her teeth in an effort to not shift around uneasily herself. Any movement was painful with the branch positioned as it was. She needed to conserve her strength for when it was most needed.

Despite all her efforts to stay still, she couldn’t help but tense when the dark markings on the Hashirama shaped tumour on Madara’s chest began to fade. So Lady Shima had been right on the money, after all.

Lady Shima had posited earlier, approximating the amount of nature energy Madara would have absorbed in his time exposed to the toad oil, that it would be around ten minutes before his sage mode would begin to wear off. After all, they all agreed that it would be a bad idea to try to take him on with it still active. 

Sakura had been loth to waste time idling, but when the alternative was certain death there was very little actual choice.

It had been some of the longest minutes of Shima’s life, though Sakura had been too eager to attempt the plan, and too preoccupied, tending to her wound, to take much notice of them. 

At long last the time was finally here. 

The last vestiges of the sage mode markings disappeared from Hashirama’s face, leaving Sakura and Madara in the same position they had begun the fight in. Square one. Well, not strictly the same position. Sakura was significantly more injured than she had been, and also significantly more aware of the fighting style of her foe. 

And she only had one sealing tag left.

No one needed to tell Sakura that this was the last shot she was going to get at Madara.

The piece of wood that had inconsiderately placed itself in the path of several rather important organs was a thorn in Sakura’s side. Or rather, her stomach. The pain was sharp, unpredictable, and most importantly, distracting. 

Sakura’s fine chakra control, the thing her entire fighting style revolved around, required focus. It depended on focus. The explosive release of chakra needed to be finely and carefully regulated. Mess that up and not only would there be collateral damage, she would almost certainly end up hurting herself. 

One thing was for certain. As things stood right now, she wouldn’t be able to pull off another Susanoo destroying attack. A blow of that calibre had required her absolute focus and complete effort. With the branch shooting pain through her as it did, disturbing, distracting her focus, channelling and controlling that amount of chakra was simply impossible. 

Sakura was no stranger to pain. It was however, very difficult to focus while impaled.

Healing the stomach wound would prevent her from any excessive acrobatic motion or action for the rest of the mission. Too much of that would cause the wound to open once again. 

On the other hand, the amount of time she could continue to fight with the branch still embedded within her was fast running out. She was doing a reasonable job of ignoring the pain for now, but at some point her body would simply refuse to cooperate with her.

A giant hole in the circulatory system is not something that could be ignored by any body indefinitely.

Most frustrating of all, Sakura possessed the means to heal the wound without leaving so much as a scar, but could not use it. There was no way she could even dream of releasing the 100 healings seal right now, not with the portal and the complete unknown it represented, still utterly unexplored. 

She couldn’t use that jutsu until she was certain it was absolutely necessary. The 100 healings was her ace in the hole, her trump card. If there were other threats within that portal, she would need all the chakra she could spare. It wouldn't do to use up her best move too soon. 

Madara was by no means the final battle, powerful through he was. He was nothing more than the doorman to no doubt untold horrors that Kazuma had cooked up or assigned to guard his facility. 

She was close. That much was certain. The chakra production and transmission facility had to lie somewhere beyond that portal, if not right at its threshold.

She caught Shima’s eye, who nodded at her, her face set in a determined scowl. If she held any reservations about Sakura’s plan, she did not show it. 

Sakura could not see Katsuyu, but she trusted that she was ready and in position. 

An image of Naruto and Sasuke briefly drifted into her mind, and she smiled, though she could not fathom why. Perhaps it was because she was so close to death. 

Then she gritted her teeth.

“Here goes”.

Sakura jumped up directly from her crouch, her stomach screaming, the pain shooting through her body. Pointedly ignoring the wound that was making it increasingly hard to do so, she channelled chakra to her hands and legs, holding the feeling in her mind of how it had felt to compress the air into those shockwaves. 

Madara’s head tilted in her direction with no delay. This time, he did not waste any time waiting for Sakura to approach, but manifested the arms of the Susanoo immediately.

They reached out, holding wickedly serrated spectral blue blades, and swung at Sakura where she hung, suspended in the air from her jump. 

Sakura channelled chakra into her left palm, and pushed, releasing it all at once, directing the force. A shockwave of compressed air blew outwards, the recoil throwing Sakura in the opposite direction, and Madara’s blade swung through empty air.

His second sword moved into position, its edge gleaming with deadly intent and ghostly light. Sakura’s other hand flared with focused chakra, a blade sharper than even Sasuke’s derisive put-downs materialising over it. 

She held out the chakra scapel, its edge colliding with Madara’s sword, and used the momentum to propel herself over it. 

As she rose into the air, she positioned her feet carefully, kicking out to her left. A shockwave exploded into being, sending Sakura rocketing to her right. Madara’s sword swung upwards to intercept her, but Sakura had focused her chakra into her right arm and leg even as she blew through the air, and first pushed rightwards, halting her movement, and then kicked backwards, the shockwave shooting her now directly towards Madara, a pink bullet fired from a giant air gun. 

She closed the gap in an instant, both of Madara’s Susanoo arms still outstretched towards where she had been a second earlier. 

Shima had observed Sakura bouncing through the air, dancing between Madara’s blades, her heart in her mouth, but had stayed stock still. The only things that moved were her hands, weaving hand signs in preparation for the right moment. And the right moment was here. 

Madara did not attempt to intercept Sakura’s blow with his hands. Whatever drove the reanimation had registered the magnitude of Sakura’s brute strength. Instead he leapt away, directly into the stream of pressurised water that shot out of Lady Shima’s mouth.

Possessing no sharingan, or indeed, eyes to see with, and distracted as he was in both manipulating the Susanoo and his own person at the same time, he had not taken notice of it, not fast enough to move out of its way.

The beam of water cut through Madara’s torso without slowing his momentum whatsoever. It wasn’t even immediately apparent that Madara had been neatly bisected. 

Generations of dead toads cried out in joy and perverse satisfaction at this cosmic role reversal. The frog had dissected the human being. 

Madara’s torso toppled backwards, separated from his waist. Still moving with the momentum of his leap, the torso skidded across the floor, crashing into the ruins of the broken wall. 

Sakura moved with the fluidity of smoke, keeping up with Madara’s motion, slamming a tag on his lower half where it had been separated from his upper half.

The sealing marks spread out and covered Madara’s legs, which fell to the ground, immobile.  
Sakura did not resist the urge to grin, because she wasn’t foolish enough to feel it in the first place. This was no victory. It was merely step 2 of the plan. 

She watched, the throbbing pain of the branch pounding through her ears, and waited.

She observed carefully as the one-armed torso that was all that was left of Madara Uchiha, made a single sign with the arm he still possessed.

His body bubbled and writhed, and twisted wood shot out of the torso’s shoulder and waist, the branches weaving themselves into the shape of feet and an arm. 

Madara, now more wood than reanimation, stood up, his face still expressionless. He began to move towards Sakura, his Susanoo flaring into being, ghostly bones and tendons stitching themselves into a humanoid silhouette as he walked. 

Now Sakura grinned. Finally, he had manifested the whole thing again. She sighed involuntarily, tension leaving her body as she fell to her knees. It was all over. Her part at least. Everything was up to lady Katsuyu now. 

.

Kazuma rubbed his eyes. Everyone else in the room stared at him expectantly. For the first time in.... months? He felt.. tired.

He winced as he felt the wires in his eye shift with the motion, then winced again as he felt zetsu put them back into place. 

Countable minutes away from his plan finally coming into fruition. And yet there always seemed to be more to do, more to account for, more to research, new problems to deal with, aberration after aberration, anomaly after anomaly.

He supposed that messing around with the fabric of reality was bound to give rise to anomalies by the very definition of the activity, but all the same, it irked him. Here was one now, squatting uncooperatively in his cell. 

Daydreaming about the first thing he would do upon arriving in the past had always been a fond pastime of Kazuma. It used to vary between finding and killing the feudal lords outright, capturing the tailed beasts, and most commonly, just overawing the shinobi of the stone age with his awesome power.

But now... now, he realised, what he really wanted to do, was rest. The first thing he would do upon arrival in the time of the warring states, was rest for real. Find a good hot spring or so, and relax with none of these grating irritants around him. Just him and zetsu, kicking back for a while. 

The sound of a slight cough from the ceiling snapped him back to the present. The gnarly, uncooperative present. 

This man was really asking for his entire life story, now, so close to the invasion. Kazuma’s arm twitched. He wanted so badly to tear the fool open, and pull the secrets of his genjutsu negating abilities from his dripping viscera, but that would take far too long. The scientific process did not like to be rushed. 

At the same time, he couldn’t very well waste time monologuing about how he had gotten as far as he had, though deep down he wanted nothing more than to do exactly that. 

He scowled in distaste. He would have to.... summarise. 

He breathed in, deciding how much to reveal and how to phrase it. He had no obligation to be truthful of course, but this close to execution there was absolutely nothing Mizuki could actually do about it. And Sasuke too would soon be taken care of. 

He pondered, his eyes half lidded, as everyone waited for his words. Finally, he decided. He would tell Mizuki the truth of it, because the truth would bring him the most despair. 

Kazuma sat down upon his swivel chair, and turned to face Mizuki. 

“You have a lot of questions for a fly that doesn’t realise just how deeply enmeshed in the spider’s web it is. Truthfully I want to just kill you and be done with it”. 

Mizuki’s expression did not change, and the man continued to stare into Kazuma’s eyes. Kazuma supressed a shudder at the intensity of his gaze. No wonder he stared so fearlessly. Even the mangekyou’s genjutsu didn’t work on him. He had nothing to fear from eyes.

Kazuma closed his own. 

“I used to have a different name once. I fought in the Fourth Great War, unlike you, and died in it. And then white zetsu brought me back. He... we.... turned into something new. A different kind of being. A god”.

Mizuki’s eyes widened. 

“White zetsu is my partner. He is a part of me now. We are effectively one being. Not entirely unlike a jinchuuriki and its tailed beast. Except zetsu and I truly understand each other”.

Kazuma paused, taking a second to check that zetsu was doing alright. His silently broadcast message was met with no reply. He did not worry. Zetsu was probably having too much fun to answer. 

“We discovered this vast cavern hidden under the Great War’s battlefield. It used to be a hideout of the Akatsuki and Obito Uchiha, and it contained, among other things, their resources, their research, and a store of Uchiha eyeballs”. He grinned as he spoke the words, knowing the pain it would cause Sasuke.

“The one in my eye is merely one of those, though the best of those sorry leftovers of that sorry clan”. He did not look up.

“How am I able to do what I do? A large portion of it is because of what I now am. My body holds an unlimited capacity for modification. I am more zetsu than human, and probably a third of Hashirama Senju too. Modifying my cellular structure is as child’s play thanks to that”.

Mizuki had started at the first Hokage’s name.

“We built our laboratory and headquarters here, and performed research into the very deepest secrets of chakra and its use, receiving wisdom and knowledge from the likes of the Second Hokage and Itachi Uchiha”. ‘I wonder’, he thought. ‘Do you hate me yet, Sasuke?’.

“I perfected the method for long range transmission of chakra myself, giving my men the ability to wield a litmitless amount of almost any kind of transmissible chakra, be it that of the first hokage or of the tailed beasts. Though those brutes proved difficult to control. 

Of course, they cannot resist obeying the laws of chakra manipulation, being made of chakra themselves, and so it was a simple matter to force their cooperation through my chakra regulator”.

Naruto gritted his teeth. He knew that his tailed beast friends hated being forcibly controlled more than anything else. What Kazuma had done to them…. He would pay for it.

“As for travelling in time…. Well… You’re right. It is impossible. For any shinobi without the incredible powers that I wield. The secret of time travel.. it was told to me by the Sage of the Sixpaths”.

He paused for dramatic effect. It was a good pause. Everyone in the room had inhaled at the mention of that legendary name. 

Mizuki opened his mouth in a gasp, seemed to want to say something, but seemingly thought better of it. 

Kazuma continued. “The sage revealed himself to me sometime during my experimentation with the Mangekyou sharingan. He knew the knowledge I sought, and gave me the answer, and his blessing”.  
He paused again.

“The sec-ret. Of. Time. Travel”, he said, emphasising the syllables of the phrase, a smile on his face. “You sure would like to know it, wouldn’t you? Greedy, grabby little thing that you are”.

Expectation was written on every face in the room, visible and invisible. 

Kazuma’s smile vanished. “It won’t do you any good, you know. Unless you’re like me, unless your body is as... adaptable as mine, you’d just die. Perish”. His mirth gone, Kazuma looked down, contemplative.

“It involves..... turning back the whole universe”. He looked up. “Chakra inundates everything. It is in everything, passes through everything, permeates the whole universe. The universe itself can be said to be nothing more than different configurations of chakra and other such forces. Time is simply one other such force, easily manipulated by something as weak as gravity”.

He looked upwards, seemingly at nothing. 

“You are well aware that it is possible to alter fate itself using the light and shadow styles of the sixpaths, the Izanagi”. He paused for that to sink in. 

“Altering time along with it simply requires another parameter, another level of sixpaths power. It is a jutsu that is analogous to the Izanagi, but it needs more than a sharingan. It requires true power. This jutsu, requires a Rinnegan. Which, of course, I possess”.

The only noises in the room were the noises of the room itself, the hum and the puff of electricity and steam. The low whirr of the cameras, the sound of the current running through the cells.

“What, did you think that just because you cannot see it, that it is not there? Come now, why would I risk showing off my most valuable resource until everything else has fallen into place?”.

Naruto opened his mouth. “How did you-”. 

“How did I get my hands on a Rinnegan?”, said Kazuma, and laughed a long and throaty laugh. Calming himself, he looked up at Mizuki. “Oh you fool. You’ll just have to go to your grave without knowing”. 

He sneered. 

“The sage called it... the Ame-no-minakanushi. The jutsu that can rewrite time itself”. His expression cleared. 

Everyone in the room could tell that Kazuma had wanted to brag about this to someone, to have this monologue, for a long time. 

“And then comes the cost. Turning back time for even just a short amount costs an incredible amount of chakra. More than enough to kill any fool that attempts such a thing. To turn back time years, even decades... Why, that would need all the chakra in the world”.

Naruto was speechless. It was one devastating surprise after another.

“Which is where my invasion comes in, you see? I have no divine tree to conveniently wrap everyone up and redirect their chakra into me, nor do I want one. We both know that that path ends in only one thing”.

Naruto nodded. “Kaguya”.

Kazuma grinned. “My, you have studied up on the war, haven’t you? Indeed, using the ten tails to absorb all the world’s chakra ends in the dominion of Kaguya Otsusuki, and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, nobody wants that”.

He smiled, a smile utterly devoid of any actual emotion.

“I had years to prepare, and the ability to travel underground to anywhere at all in the world. So, I made good use of it. It wasn’t easy by any means, but together zetsu and I built our chakra extraction apparatus deep within the earth below every hidden village, far too deep for anyone to actually take notice”.

Naruto’s stomach went cold. 

“Every village sits atop our construction, and all it would take to trigger the entire affair, is nothing more than the push of a button”, said Kazuma, smiling this time with actual enjoyment, as his finger hovered over his arm computer. 

“You can imagine, the shinobi of the world aren’t going to simply sit around do nothing as titanic structures emerge from the ground around them and surround their villages. They’re idiots, but they’re idiots who protect their pathetic little nests”. He shrugged. 

“Which is why my army is needed to keep them busy and diverted, and above all, unable to leave their villages or damage my apparatus, at least until it’s up and running. They won’t be much of a threat after that”. 

He looked upwards, almost proudly. “The kage know enough to worry, but not enough to act. I have ears in every village, and I can tell you with certainty, Mizuki, those old fools are paralysed with fear. They see the rise of a force they cannot hope to defeat, and rightly fear their own ends. And thus will they remain, powerless and ineffective, as their chakra drains away from their shriveled husks and enters my person. The power they worked so hard to acheive will become the fuel that burns the fire of my jutsu”. 

“And that leaves only the tailed beasts, and those two annoyances, Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha”.

Both shinobi winced ever so slightly as they were named. 

“The tailed beasts, as I said, are no trouble at all. I possess all their individual chakra frequencies. All I need do is broadcast the inverse frequency into the world, and the respective beast will be in far too much pain to move, or indeed, resist, as its chakra is drained into my machine by more conventional means.

A machine I have already perfected, building as I have, upon the akatsuki’s research on their..”, he wrinkled his nose in disgust, “Mecha-Naruto”.

Naruto let out a small, disbelieving laugh, and Kazuma nodded. “Indeed. Ugly looking thing”. He looked up. 

“Reaching and containing the tailed beasts will be an amusing little after-party of an activity, with their locations already known to me. And as for Naruto and Sasuke, well”.

He chuckled. 

“Naruto will find himself helpless before my genjutsu, and Sasuke... Sasuke will not be much of an obstacle, believe me". 

“Of course, it goes without saying that the Amenominakanushi would still be absolutely useless to someone like Sasuke Uchiha”, he said in an offhanded manner. 

“Such a piddler would only be able to turn back time for however long they could maintain an Izanagi, say around a minute or so. Hardly seems worth losing one’s Rinnegan over, if you ask me. And of course, the chakra cost would kill someone as weak as he is, without a doubt.”

Naruto gritted his teeth once again, but said nothing. 

“Only I”, continued Kazuma, “possess both the knowledge and the ability to execute this most genius of plans. Only I, can take the fate of this world into my palm, and rewrite it into one that knows true peace”.

He smiled triumphantly, his sermon finished, and looked down at Naruto almost benignly.

Naruto meanwhile, had been undergoing revelation after revelation, as Kazuma had revealed to him all the impossible things that had come together to make him who he was. It all made sense now, it all made sense....

“Now, Mizuki”, Kazuma said, almost gently. “It’s your turn. Tell me how you negated my genjutsu”.

Naruto scowled, his arms folded over his chest, as he desperately tried to decide on what to say.

They sat like that for a few minutes, the Sasuke on the ceiling gradually growing more and more impatient at all the nothing that was going on. He wished it would hurry up and go on faster. He had an invasion to stop.

Finally, movement broke the haze of stillness that had settled over the waiting shinobi. Naruto’s shoulders were shaking. They moved with seeming randomness, convulsing as though the man was weeping inconsolably, but the noises that came out of his mouth said otherwise. 

They were the sounds of laughter. Deep, hearty laughter. Sasuke froze at how familiar it sounded... the voice just sounded.. wrong. He was certain that given a little more time he would be able to pin a name to that laugh, but right now he simply couldn’t spare the focus. 

Kazuma frowned as Mizuki wiped tears from his eyes and looked up. “Well? How did you do it? How did you break the genjutsu?”.

Mizuki grinned, his voice a mocking parody. “Oh you fool. You’ll just have to go to your grave without knowing”.

.

Madara’s Susanoo towered into existence, imposing in its incomplete form. It moved inexorably toward Sakura, with all the gravity of a continent. Rubble and shrapnel alike was brushed out of its way by its mere motion, as Madara moved forward. 

And then Madara stopped moving.

Something white and blue and slimy and wriggly, leaked out of the ground underneath Madara’s feet. The puddle of slime flowed upwards, shivering and pulsating like something alive. 

It leaked out of the ground, utterly unaffected by the Susanoo that did not extend belowground, pooling around Madara, covering his wooden feet competely, and began to swarm upwards.  
Madara jerked and kicked outwards, but the slime splattered against the insides of his own Susanoo, trapping them in that small space with him.

The Susanoo vanished in a flash of blue, and Madara wove a handsign, the wood of his body exploding into a ball of writhing spikes.

This did not seem to inconvenience the slime very much, which continued to crawl up over the branches. As Madara spasmed and moved, trying to shake them off, a small, white stain appeared on the ceiling above him, one that began to first drip onto Madara, and then pour onto the wretched reanimation.

The writhing slime covered him from head to toe, and the room was utterly quiet save for the noises of quiet sliming and squelching. 

Lady Shima shivered, glad that she had never tried to eat Katsuyu regardless of how tasty she looked. She did not relish being dissolved alive by millions of microscopic slugs. What a nasty way to go. 

And then the slime covered shinobi moved, and erupted into a ball of flame.

Sakura winced. That would be uncomfortable for Lady Katsuyu, and indeed, the slime seemed to be disappearing rapidly in little puffs of smoke. 

Flaming bits of slime dripped off the shinobi onto the ground, vanishing when it made impact. Madara himself fell forwards, his entire lower half and one arm, burning away into nothing. 

He had used his fire style jutsu upon himself, mused Sakura, as she watched him burn. A smart move. Efficient. Utterly pointless. 

Finally rid of the crawling slime, Madara made a sign, and his wooden limbs regenerated, standing the man up once more.

Sakura smiled, her eyes far away. It was finally over. The plan had worked.

Madara brushed himself off, and set off towards Sakura once more.

And froze after he had taken the first step.

Sakura turned her attention away from Madara, and slowly, carefully, pulled out the branch that had tormented her for so long. She bit back a scream as it fell onto the ground, slick with her blood and... guts. 

She applied her medical ninjutsu to the wound, sighing as the pain began to dull and the bleeding began to slow.

It was only a stop gap solution, but it would have to do until she could come up with a better alternative. 

She looked wearily upwards at Madara, who was still rooted to the spot, his sightless eyes gazing away, Beholding something Sakura couldn’t fathom. 

She felt the weight of Lady Shima as the toad hopped up and onto her shoulder. “Don’t relax yet, we aren’t out of the woods by a long shot”, she said with urgency. Sakura waved the words off.

“It’s over. The fight’s over”.

Madara’s head jerked towards her voice with no warning, his eyes, though blind, seemingly doing their best to focus on the source of the sound. He stared without blinking, a ceaseless watcher that saw nothing. 

Sakura looked up at him and smiled, knowing he couldn’t see it. “Madara Uchiha. It’s been a while”.

She felt the toad tense on her shoulder as the reanimation regarded her silently, and did not jump when it tilted its head.

She had not known what to expect from her show of familiarity. Would it recognise her? Or would it respond with some version of “I do not know you”? Or would it forgo conversation altogether and just attack?

“It’s been longer than you know, child”, he said, sitting down, exhaustion carved upon his face.

Sakura shivered at the sound of the voice. One that haunted her worst nightmares. “You know who I am?”, she asked, her hands on her wound but her eyes trained on Madara. 

Madara smiled. “You insult me. Do you really believe me so incompetent as to battle an opponent for as long as I did and not realise who I was fighting?”. 

Sakura’s apprehension grew. “So you remember the battle?”. 

“I remember everything”, said Madara, his voice heavy with a terrible weight. “I remember everything that he made me do. Everything that I saw”. He paused and chuckled. “Well, everything that I experienced, at any rate”.

He looked up at Sakura. “You have grown stronger. It surprises me how long you managed to last without the aid of those two”. He grinned. “You put up a better fight than those fools, the five kage, but that’s hardly a compliment given how pathetic their ‘strength’ was”.

Sakura exhaled, the healing as complete as the circumstances would allow. “So you’re not going to stop me then? From entering that portal?”

Madara shrugged. “I could not care less what you do with this world. It is a thing that is far too broken to ever be fixed. Whatever light breaks the endless night of its uncaring darkness, will come from the misguided flames of Hashirama’s dream”. He smiled, his eyes glinting in the light. “It is not a world I care to live in”. 

Sakura smiled, an expression that rang more with vindication than relief. “So you were right after all”, whispered Lady Shima.

So she had been right after all. Her gamble had paid off. Her half remembered memory of Madara’s words as he had lain dying at the first hokage’s feet. Her theory that if they managed to break Kazuma’s hold on him, Madara would simply leave the world of the living on his own accord. 

However, for whatever reason, he was still here, though apparently offering her no resistance. 

“I am curious”, he said, breaking the cautious silence. “How did you manage it? How did you free me from his control?”.

Sakura paused for a second, evaluating the wisdom of telling him. “I destroyed the kunai and the animating tag in your head”.

“Oh?”. 

As he spoke, white slime began to trickle out of his ear and onto the ground, where it coalesced into the shape of a small, thumb sized slug.

“You remember the slime, I assume?”, asked Sakura. 

Madara frowned, looking down at the tiny creature. “Yes. Nasty little thing. It’s one of the Senju’s summons, isn’t it? The slug of Shikkotsu Woods, though I’ve never seen it divide that much or assume a size that small”.

Sakura nodded. “That slime was made of Lady Katsuyu. Millions of her clones, so small as to look like a living slime. It covered you entirely, and you would have been utterly dissolved if you hadn’t burned them all away. The fire got rid of all the slugs that covered your body, but it did nothing about all the ones inside”.

Madara smiled. “Ah”. 

“Yeah. Lady Katsuyu entered through your ear holes and nostrils. She infiltrated your body all the way to your brain, where she found the kunai and the animating tag, and dissolved them both”.

Madara shook his head in resignation, a reproachful grin on his face. “I don’t believe any Senju ever used the slug that..... ruthlessly”. He gave a mirthless chuckle, and lapsed into silence. 

The two sat there, neither saying anything, as each much-maligned minute passed with all the speed of sixty or so seconds.

Finally, Madara got to his feet, wooden as they were. Sakura observed him carefully, but he made no move towards his sealed limbs.

“You have my gratitude for awakening me from that mindless slumber. I will not obstruct you, nor those two, who are no doubt somewhere here”. 

Sakura got to her feet, dusting herself off. 

“I would appreciate it however, if your toad would give me another dose of that sage chakra. Navigating this place blind is something of an annoyance, even for me”.

Sakura looked at Shima, who shook her head in an emphatic ‘no’. 

Madara must have sensed the motion, for he spoke once more. “It doesn’t make much of a difference to me. I know where Kazuma has his nature energy batteries stored. I’ll just have to find one and drain it. It’ll be a bit more of an annoyance, that’s all”.

Shima shook her head even harder. “Lady Shima, please”, said Sakura, who couldn’t believe she was saying it. 

She didn’t know why Madara hadn’t left the world of the living yet, but it was amply clear he had no desire to stay. Perhaps the jutsu could only be broken with Kazuma’s death, which she for one, was not going to oppose. 

“Lady Shima, he might prove useful against Kazuma”. 

Shima shook her head. “No. No way. Having this sort of a .. a... wild card loose in the mix is just too much! It’s too risky. I refuse”. She looked at Sakura, a scandalised expression on her face. “Or have you forgotten what he’s done??”. 

Madara turned towards the portal. “My patience is wearing thin. Either help me or do not. I grow tired of this... this waiting. All these months... all those experiments.. I..”. He paused. “......I’m finished waiting”.

He set off towards the portal, and Sakura called out. “Wait!”, she yelled, before abashedly realising what she had said. 

Madara paused. 

“Lady Shima, do it. Please. Trust me”.

Shima looked up at Sakura with an expression that would not seem out of place when judging whether a fruit was ripe or spoiled. “Fine. But this is the last of the toad oil I have with me. I can’t get any more without returning to Mount Myoboku”.

She turned to Madara, her stomach convulsing as she brought up the toad oil she had stored somewhere within her body. A stream of it shot out and landed all over Madara, who smiled as the dark markings began to appear over Hashirama’s eyes and forehead. 

He inclined his head in Shima’s direction. “Thank you”, he said. 

Sakura meanwhile, had been thinking. “Say, if you remember everything, you know the inside of that place”, she said, gesturing to the portal, “inside and out, right?”

Madara ignored her and began to walk towards the portal. “Hey! Hold on!”, she yelled after him. “Maybe you could guide us through it and take us to- hey!”.

Madara had vanished into its depths.

Sakura sighed glumly. “So much for him”.

Carefully so as not to open her stomach wound, she walked over to the swirling surface of the portal. 

Something dark and... metallic shimmered on the other side.

She looked once at Shima, who nodded back, and walked in without another glance.

.

Kazuma had reached the end of his tether. His face wore a manic grin as he cackled. 

“You know what? I don’t need you alive after all! You can die RIGHT HERE!”, he yelled, his hand moving to a button on his arm computer. 

Even as it moved, another arm schlorped out of his shoulder, gripping Kazuma’s hand before it could push the button.

“Zetsu........ let...... me...... go......”, muttered Kazuma through gritted teeth.

The cheery, singsong voice replied from a mouth not visible to the others. “You still have to take on Naruto Uzumaki, you know? And if your genjutsu doesn’t work on him, what then?”.

The silence pulsed intermittently between all the ambient noises that drowned it out.

“I’ll...... I’ll figure something out”, said Kazuma gruffly. 

“And if the answer lies in his memories? What then? You can’t read the experiences of a corpse”. 

Kazuma shook with fury. “Look, I’ll just reanimate him and MAKE him tell me, so let.. me... go!”.

Zetsu’s arm snapped away as Kazuma pushed the button gleefully. “Enjoy being electrocuted to death, fool!”, he yelled, eyes alight with anticipation.

#1 and #2 cringed, both being well accustomed to watching prisoners fry.

It never looked any prettier the next time around.

There was a low hum as electricity coursed through the room.

There was a soft whirr as Kazuma’s cameras watched.

There was a sudden growl of realisation as Kazuma realised that these were just the ambient noises of the room, and nothing more. “WHY AREN’T YOU DYING???”, he yelled, pushing the button again and again and again with increased frustration each time.

To borrow a phrase, the nothing that had so inarguably happened, continued to happen.

Sasuke resisted the urge to laugh. Finally, someone else was having at least as frustrating a day as he was.

Kazuma’s chest rose and fell as his breath grew laboured. He was spiralling, and #1 and #2 began to back away. #2 could faintly sense that the story was reaching some sort of climax, and those usually left secondary characters dead.

Kazuma’s eyes twitched asynchronously, and almost unconsciously he began to weave hand signs. 

“Fine then. If you won’t burn, choke to death!”.  
Sasuke had had enough. 

He began to silently creep past Kazuma to the passageway that led out of the room and into the innards of the plateau. Whatever this secret weapon was, wasting time here wouldn’t lead him to it. It was abundantly clear that Kazuma wasn’t going anywhere fast.

It was this motion that caused Kazuma to pause once more. He couldn’t have Sasuke deciding to quit their little dance, not now. Not so close to the end.

He gritted his teeth, his rage building and building until it finally erupted in the form of an angst ridden yell. 

“FINE! Fine!”. He looked at Mizuki, his eyes seething with barely contained contempt and fury. “Have it your way then,” he hissed, and turned around with enough violence to leave spiralling air currents in his wake.

He stormed towards the passage that Sasuke had been sneaking towards, casually overtaking the man as he paused to watch Kazuma’s movements, and stopped once he had reached the entryway.

“#1! #2! I’m ordering the both of you to stay here and stand guard. Watch over our.... guest, and make sure his stay is.... comfortable”.

#1 and #2 grinned as one. They didn’t particularly like torturing the broken husks of the people that usually occupied the cells, but this man wasn’t broken. He wasn’t even one of them. He was an outsider, and that meant they felt no qualms regarding electrocuting the ever living daylights out of him. 

When they were done with him, he would’ve conducted enough volts to fill an entire electric orchestra.

Kazuma continued to glare at Naruto for a few more moments, before he finally turned his head and left in a huff, leaving a vacuumn in the lab where his presence had been, and a sour taste in Naruto’s mouth.

Naruto eyed #1 and #2, who eyed him right back. They stared at each other, the guards wearing grins that were widening by the minute, Naruto wearing Mizuki’s face and the Hidden Leaf’s green and dark blue.

Finally, with a noise like breaking glass, the tension snapped. 

#1 and #2 approached the cell, #1 hoisting into view a remote control that was undoubtedly the electrocution trigger. He waved it in the air in a manner that was clearly meant to be threatening. 

Naruto’s eyebrows furrowed. 

“Why are you doing that?”.

#1 froze. “Huh?”.

“Why are you waving that thing around?”.

#1 frowned. “To show you that I have the power to make your life hell and I’m not afraid to use it”.

#2 frowned. That was henchman dialogue if he had ever heard it.

Naruto shook his head. “If you’re trying to be threatening you’re doing it all wrong. You look like you’re trying to... I dunno, wipe an invisible window or something, when you wave it around like that”.

#1 tilted his head, now puzzled. “What did you just say about me?”.

#2 could have sworn he had read a conversation before just like the one that was unfolding in front of him, in at least one of those spy novels.

“I said you’re doing it all wrong. That doesn’t look scary at all!”.

#1 scowled. “You telling me how to do my job?”. 

“I’m telling you how you can do it better! Face it, what you’re doing now, even I could do better than that”.

Kitetsu was watching the conversation with horrified fascination.

“You think it’s so easy, huh?”.

“I know it is! I could do better than that in my sleep!”.

“Why you arrogant little.. If you think you can do it better than I can, why don’t you give it a try, huh? See how easy you find it?”.

“You know what, I think I will!”.

“Hah! Have fun making a fool of yourself!”.

“Well we won’t know until I try, won’t we?”.

“Alright fine! Do it then!”.

#1 tossed the square of metal in his hand into the cell. 

#2 connected the dots a second too late, remembering how those conversations ended just a mite too slowly. Dread began to seep into his stomach as he finally understood the narrative importance of everyone in the room.

The quipping, cocky fellow in the jail cell had to be the hero. Without question. After all, Lord Kazuma had just tried to kill him, and had failed. An occurrence that had never ever happened before. If that wasn’t plot armour, he didn’t know what was.

And furthermore, judging by their interactions, #1 and #2 were probably just henchmen. #2 realised with a chill that Lord Kazuma almost never actually used his name. More proof of secondary character-hood.

Which meant... which meant.. the villain of the story was .... Lord Kazuma...

And the villain always loses.......

#2 shook his head, snapping himself out of his briefly transcendental haze. No way! Lord Kazuma wouldn’t lose! He never had before! 

And besides, retrieving the trigger was simply a matter of unlocking the cell and pulling it out. It wasn’t like they could do any ninjutsu in there anyway, and furthermore, they were literally chained down.

#1 seemed to have realised the enormity of the scale of his foolishness in throwing away the trigger, and had gone pale, looking at #2 for support and salvation.

Kitetsu did not understand how anything that had just happened, had just happened. He had stopped questioning events, and was now simply along for the ride.

Naruto had grabbed the fallen remote control immediately, and now held it between his hands, studying it intently. 

“Hey, Kitetsu. There must be a way to free ourselves with this thing, musn’t there?”.

Kitetsu regarded him with something like awe in his eyes. “I.... wouldn’t think so. Lord Kazuma wouldn’t be careless enough to leave those two with the keys to our freedom in their hands. Lord Kazuma prefers codes and excessive verification”.

He looked up. “If I had to guess, Mizuki, I’d say there’s probably a seven digit code or something along those lines, that would be needed to unlock any of the cells”.

Naruto deflated. “So this one is just the electro-.... the elctricu-... the electric shock trigger, then”

Kitetsu nodded. 

Naruto looked at him carefully. Somehow, the man seemed less... broken, than before. Kitetsu looked up and met his gaze, and smiled.

It was that same, dead, soulless smile that Naruto had come to know, but this time it didn’t unsettle him. It merely filled him with pity. 

Kitetsu opened his mouth and spoke quietly, his voice hoarse and scratching. “You’re Naruto Uzumaki, aren’t you?”

Naruto froze.

“Wh... whaaaat? Wh- what is that supposed to mean?? I’m Mizuki! I fought Naruto Uzumaki long ago, sure, but then I-”

Kitetsu interrupted him. “Mizuki. What’s your last name?”.

Naruto froze once more. “What?”.

“Your last name. What is it? Surely you aren’t just Mizuki nothing?”.

Naruto had no answer, no matter how frantically he searched for one. His last name!! What had Mizuki’s last name been?!

Kitetsu laughed, a gasping thing that broke into a series of coughs. 

“J-... Just as I thought”. He shook his head derisively. “I’m in a cell with Naruto Uzumaki...... Who would’ve thought”.

Naruto’s fear slowly melted into a sharp resolve. 

“Alright. You know who I am. If you tell them I’ll-”. Kitetsu held up his only hand, shaking his head.

“Kazuma... Kazuma played me for a fool and took my life. He... he did... this”, he said, gesturing to his warped shoulder, “to me”. 

Naruto’s resolve slowly melted away. “You... you’re saying you’re on my side?”.

Kitetsu grinned ruefully. “Not much of a choice, is it? You hypocrites with your false peace, or him and his grandstanding”. His grin dried up. “At least you people understand the meaning of mercy. I’ll find none here”.

“What’s more, I’ll do anything to stop Kazuma. He.. he threatened to find my family... in the past.. and...”. His voice caught.

Naruto closed his eyes, absorbing the information, and opened them once more. “I understand. You don’t have to say anymore”.

Kitetsu’s expression grew determined. “So yes, I am on your side. Kazuma has miscalculated, and you are that miscalculation. He’s underestimated you. If anyone can beat that maniac, you can. I’ve already saved your life once today. I can definitely get you out of this cell”.

Naruto frowned. “Saved my life once today?”.

Kitetsu looked at him. “Don’t be dense. Did you really think the electrocution trigger just malfunctioned? That god just stepped in and saved you? It was me”.

Naruto’s mouth opened and closed like a goldfish. “Wha- How?”.

In reply, Kitetsu gestured downwards. 

Naruto looked down, to see that the chain that wound from his ankles had been looped around Kitetsu’s. “I... I don’t understand”.

Kitetsu grinned. “You don’t work for Kazuma for as long as I have and not learn a thing or two. I’ve got a metal rod in my chest and wooden flesh for a shoulder. Between that conductor and insulator I can direct the current away from you and entirely into myself. And if I ain’t touching the ground it can’t very well shock me either. 

Naruto frowned. “But you are touching the...”. Kitetsu shook his head and got up.  
Underneath where he had sat, a thin seat of wood covered the metal floor of the cell.

Naruto inhaled sharply. “How’d you do that? So you can use ninjutsu in these cells? I assumed that-”.

“No”, interjected Kitetsu. “You can’t. These cells are covered with some sort of... chakra cancelling field. I don’t know how it works, but chakra.. it can’t exist in these cells. It’s... I don’t know, drained away? Or canceled out somehow? 

The specifics are beyond me. But when white zetsu brought me in here he briefly made a hole in the floor when he had to come in. A break in the field. He didn’t think I was awake, but I was. I’ve seen enough prisoners fry to be very wary of the cell floor. I managed to make this thin layer of wood before he closed it, and I don’t think anyone noticed. Most prisoners are far too.... broken to actually try anything when they’re put here”.

Naruto put a hand to his chin. “I see”.

Naruto looked up just as #2 began to type a code into the pad on their cell door, and froze at the sight. Were they seriously just going to... come in?

Naruto grinned.

#2 meanwhile, was nervous. Even more so than usual. Being Lord Kazuma’s bodyguard meant more or less always being on your toes, but the day had been insane, even for them. 

He didn’t want to screw up, didn’t want to have to face Lord Kazuma’s ire. 

Wiping the sweat from his forehead and doing his very best not to think about anything related to plot devices or literary archetypes, he typed the first five digits of the code, before glancing briefly at the prisoner, Mizuki.

The sight froze him to his very bones.

Mizuki was grinning at him. #2 felt unnerved like he hadn’t ever been before. 

He blinked nervously, and suddenly Mizuki’s eyes seemed slit pupilled and blood red. His smile seemed to stretch on and on and on and on, longer than any human mouth had any right to be.  
His hands seemed to distend, sharpening into horrible, clawed appendages, and worst of all, nine huge shadows seemed to extend from him, tower over him, arching over Mizuki and stretching outwards, reaching outwards like so many spiralling fingers.

Something told him with absolute certainty that if those shadows touched him, he would be a dead man. 

#2 leaped backwards, screaming, and #1 jumped at the sound. 

“What’s wrong? What happened?”.

#2 shook his head frantically, saying nothing. It took several seconds for #1 to calm down his hyperventilating partner, but when #2 was finally able to articulate, he simply shot Naruto a fearful stare, and said, “We can’t open that cell”.

Naruto frowned at the man’s abject horror, before realisation hit him. “Kurama!”, he said reproachfully. Kurama smiled within him, eyes closed. “I was just having a little fun”.

#1 and #2 backed away from the cell, and Naruto sighed, turning away from them and towards Kitetsu.

His hand fell to his lap and they sat there together in the shared silence of the damned. The desolate moans of the other dead men echoed from the adjacent cells. 

Finally, Kitetsu spoke.

“How did you do it? How did you negate his genjutsu?”.

Naruto grinned sheepishly, his finger rubbing his nose in unconscious embarrassment. 

“I think... I think I slept through the whole thing”.

Kitetsu stared at him, mouth agape, and then burst into wheezing laughter that shook his entire frame with each gasping laugh. #1 and #2 stared at it, wide eyed and terrified, as the room echoed with the laughter of the dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for making it all the way to the end of this chapter. I hope reading this is somewhat enjoyable? I make no promises as to updates because I have no control over my life and so cannot guarantee when I'll be done. I'll do my best though


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